Street

Painkillers ‘n Coffee Enemas

❑ New powerful painkiller has abuse experts worried: Drug companies are working to develop a pure, more powerful version of the nation’s second most-abused medicine, which has addiction experts worried that it could spur a new wave of abuse. The new pills contain the highly addictive painkiller hydrocodone, packing up to 10 times the amount of the drug as existing medications such as Vicodin. Four companies have begun patient testing, and one of them — Zogenix of San Diego — plans to apply early next year to begin marketing its product, Zohydro. If approved, it would mark the first time patients could legally buy pure hydrocodone. Existing products combine the drug with nonaddictive painkillers such as acetaminophen. Critics say they are especially worried about Zohydro, a timed-release drug meant for managing moderate to severe pain, because abusers could crush it to release an intense, immediate high. “I have a big concern that this could be the next OxyContin,”
❑ Federal funding went to coffee enema study: A decade ago, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine helped fund a study with the National Cancer Institute of an arduous regimen for pancreatic cancer that is best known for frequent “detoxifying” coffee enemas. The research design pitted standard chemotherapy against a regimen developed by Nicholas Gonzalez, a New York City physician. In the study, volunteers on the Gonzalez protocol got coffee enemas twice a day. They also took dozens of supplements each day, including 69 to 81 capsules of pancreatic enzymes; maintained a strict diet; and engage in other “detoxifying” activities, such as “skin brushing.”
❑ Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition: Imagine having the feeling that tiny bugs are crawling on your body, that you have oozing sores and mysterious fibers sprouting from your skin. Sound like a horror movie? Well, at one point several years ago, government doctors were getting up to 20 calls a day from people saying they had such symptoms. Many of these people were in California and one of that state’s U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein, asked for a scientific study. In 2008, federal health officials began to study people saying they were affected by this freakish condition called Morgellons. The study cost nearly $600,000. Its long-awaited results, released Wednesday, conclude that Morgellons exists only in the patients’ minds. “We found no infectious cause,” said Mark Eberhard, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who was part of the 15-member study team.
❑ Bonnie and Clyde guns bring $210,000 in Missouri auction: Two guns believed seized from gangsters Bonnie and Clyde in 1933 after a deadly Missouri shootout with police sold for a combined $210,000 at an auction on Saturday in Kansas City to an unnamed online bidder. The bidder paid $130,000 for a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun, known as a “Tommy gun” in gangster slang. The same bidder paid $80,000 for an 1897 12-gauge Winchester shotgun.
❑ 5 Creepy Forms of Mind Control You’re Exposed to Daily: One of our favorite subjects is the way marketers can use psychology to manipulate you into doing what they want (we don’t think “brainwashing” is too strong a word). We know what you’re thinking: You’re far too cynical to fall for the ads you fast forward through on your DVR or the little tricks employed by marketers and politicians to push your subconscious buttons. But are you sure? Because science has found …
❑ Man gets 40 years for killing mom over Avril Lavigne concert tickets: Prosecutors say he got into an argument with his mother after she refused to call a friend to obtain skybox tickets for him to an upcoming Avril Lavigne concert. Lyons then hit Bolek with a cognac bottle, stabbed her repeatedly and poured chemicals like Tile-X, Drain-O and Rapid insecticide over her body. He was found several hours later at a Hooters restaurant.
❑ Calif. man arrested after driving SUV into subway tunnel: Police arrested the driver of an SUV after he headed straight down a tunnel into the San Francisco subway system, causing massive delays during Thursday morning’s commute. Muni Metro spokesman Paul Rose told NBCBayArea. com in San Francisco the vehicle drove into a tunnel on Church Street shortly before 6 a.m. Thursday and headed east toward the Van Ness Station. The SUV stopped when it got stuck on the tracks, police said. Police say 40-year-old Scott Mitchell of Sebastopol, Calif., was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, failure to obey a stop sign and driving on train tracks.
❑ Scotland is the fake cocaine capital of the world: The reason why is obvious: a 25kg plastic drum of benzocaine wholesales at £2750 from specialist suppliers, but one kilo of high purity cocaine powder – say 89% pure cocaine hydrochloride just off the boat from Colombia – sells at £50,000 in Scotland. So anyone cutting 1kg of coke worth £50,000 with 1kg of benzocaine worth £200 would get 2kg of half-strength product that gives a profit of about 60% on a single cut. Detective Sergeant Michael Miller, a drugs expert at Strathclyde Police, reckons cocaine is cut up to 15 times with benzocaine before it is finally sold in small plastic bags in pubs and clubs as £40 per gramme. Miller and colleagues at the Scottish Crime & Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) reckon the average purity of Scottish street level cocaine is now only 5%.
❑ 10 abandoned places: No-man’s-land: Man-made environmental catastrophes come in varying degrees of tragic, but none is as awful as when human action renders once-pristine land uninhabitable. It’s important to remember that while clean air, water and soil seemingly come for free, those resources require stewardship. Keeping that principle in mind, here’s our list of 10 places that have had to be abandoned because of environmental neglect.
❑ “Huffing” Isn’t Just Kid’s Stuff: More Adults Are Now Abusing Inhalants: Illicit drugs offer a high to adults and youth that comes with a dangerous price. Drugs like marijuana and cocaine cost people physically, mentally, and monetarily. When teens can’t monetarily afford drugs to give them a high, or are worried about using illicit drugs, sometimes they turn to getting their high from inhalants. These kids found that sniffing chemicals that are found in common products like household cleaners was an easy way to get their high. But one new study shows that it’s no longer just kids who are getting their high by “huffing.” A study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) revealed that more than half of the people who were admitted for treatment of inhalant abuse were 18 years and older. In the past year, 1.1 million adults used inhalants. In SAMHSA’s study, 52 percent of those admitted for inhalant abuse was aged 18 to 29, 32 percent were aged 30 to 44, and 16 percent were 45 and older.
❑ Man ate cat, used tail as necklace: A transient was arrested after police said he skinned and ate a cat while camping inside a Phoenix warehouse and music venue. Authorities say the building’s owners reported a burglary after they opened the warehouse Wednesday and heard blaring music. Police found 24-year-old Russell Christopher Hofstad inside with his face painted and the cat’s tail and intestines around his neck. Hunger claimed Hofstad told police he killed the cat because he was hungry. He also said he was going to use its skeleton as party decorations.
❑ Man sentenced for injecting 3-year-old girl with heroin: Authorities said Jeffrey P. LeBlanc, 31, of 18 Treadwell Drive, Spencer, told them he injected the child with the drug while babysitting for her on the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2010, because she had been ill the night before and he wanted to help her “feel better and relax.” He reportedly said he shot himself up with heroin first, then gave the girl a small amount of the drug.
❑ Chololi – The Nose Hair Notification Service: Have you been dying to tell someone that their nose hairs gross you out? Do you find yourself facing them every day, unable to voice out your disgust? If your answer to these two questions is “yes” , Chololi is just the service for you. It allows anyone to email people anonymously, telling them that their pesky nostril hairs need to be trimmed soon. Originally launched in Japanese, the web service is now available for the English-speaking as well. To use it, all you need to do is go to their website and fill out a form. Provide the person’s name, e-mail address, the nostril through which the hair is visible, the number of hairs and you’re done! The message will be conveyed in secrecy. Just for kicks, you can even choose the tone with which the message is delivered. There’s mild, strong, commanding, and the nastiest of them all, scornful.
❑ Ohio wrestler gets 32 years in HIV assault case: A former professional wrestler was sentenced Monday to 32 years in prison for having sex with women without telling them he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Andre Davis, 29, was sentenced in a Hamilton County court on 14 counts of felonious assault. Davis, who wrestled using stage names including Gangsta of Love and Sweet Sexy Sensation, was convicted in November. Prosecutors had said Davis violated state law by not telling a dozen sex partners about his HIV status or lying to them. Davis told the judge Monday that he was a “sex addict’’ and that his addiction grew worse when he lost his dream of becoming a professional wrestler after getting the HIV test results. He said sex addiction is probably the worst addiction anyone could have. “Drugs and alcohol are terrible, but sex is something everybody wants,’’ he said.
❑ N.Y. man arrested after passing heroin at Dulles Airport: U.S. Custom and Border Protection agents say Michael Babatune Ayodele, 19, from Queens, N.Y. passed 55 thumb-sized pellets while being questioned during a secondary inspection. Ayodele arrived Jan. 16 aboard a flight from Nigeria via Kenya and Zurich, Switzerland. Customs officers detected inconsistencies with Ayodele’s story about allegedly visiting family in Nigeria. While being questioned, Ayodele asked to use the bathroom, which is where he passed the heroin-filled pellets. Officers took Ayodele to a local hospital where he passed an additional 31 pellets, also filled with heroin. The 86 pellets had a combined weight of 1,089 grams, or more than 2 pounds, 6 ounces, and an approximate street value of about $78,000.
❑ Fleshlipad Holder Concept (Fleshlight iPad Holder and App): This conceptual design titled the FleshliPad Holder, melds the Fleshlight device to a rubber housing for the Apple iPad (or alternative tablet) allowing the cumsumer to interactively reach self-gratification with various pre-recorded multimedia (photograph, video or animation) designed specifically for the tablet-penis interface. Thanks Baller
❑ Adam Blumenkranz Arrested For Smoking Weed On A JetBlue Flight: This man brings a whole new meaning to the mile “high” club. Adam Blumenkranz, a 42-year-old LA man, was arrested Monday for allegedly smoking pot mid-flight in a JetBlue airplane bathroom, KTLA reports. Flight attendants became suspicious when Blumenkranz dropped a clear plastic bag in the cabin, reports the Associated Press. When he emerged from the lavatory, a “strong smell of marijuana” emerged with him. The plane was flying from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. to Newark, N.J. Police met Blumenkranz at the terminal gate in New Jersey and took him into custody, under charges of possession of a controlled dangerous substance and drug paraphernalia. According to KTLA, Blumenkranz told police he believed he had done nothing illegal because he has a medical marijuana card.
❑ Lana Del Rey, an Artificial Creation?: In a very short period of time, an enigmatic singer named Lana Del Rey went from complete anonymity to the front page of magazines, not to mention intense internet buzz and an SNL appearance. But along with this (almost literal) overnight success came revelations regarding the rising star: She is a total creation of her record company – Interscope, the same as Lady Gaga. When her previous artist persona named Lizzie Grant became a monumental flop, she underwent intense retooling including: A new name (which was assigned to her by her label), plastic surgery, a new musical style, a new image and a new marketing strategy. The same way Stefani Germanotta was “revamped” to become Lady Gaga – a fake persona that fits the requirements of today’s music industry – Lizzie Grant was revamped as Lana Del Rey. Will this alter-persona be used to push the Illuminati agenda in the future?
❑ Boy With Cat-Like Eyes Discovered in China [Video]
Marine to serve no time in Iraqi killings case: A Marine sergeant who led a squad that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis avoided serving any time Tuesday for his role in one of the darkest chapters of the Iraq war, winning leniency through a plea deal that carried no real punishment beyond a reduction in rank. Military judge Lt. Col. David Jones said he did not realize until after he recommended that Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich serve three months in the brig that his hands were tied by a deal that prevented any jail time.
❑ Picture of Cancerous Deer or Warts? – Shocking!: This picture was shared on Facebook through some of my friends. I am not going to go on and on about this topic. The picture is worth 1,000,000 words. Originally thought to have been shot in a fracking area, of PA, but the story has changed and other sources posted. ***EDIT: Now the story has gotten interesting, and has been changed and sources questioned. I removed the persons name and posted original sources. Apparently the deer was shot in Tenn too, now. This source seem much more credible and has a quote from the hunter.
❑ Caynton Caves: Black magic rituals force closure of mysterious site after owners lose patience with trespassing cult: A labyrinth of mysterious caves has been closed down after its owners finally got sick of them being invaded by a satanic cult. The Caynton Caves, hidden in dense woodland near Wolverhampton, have a rich history stemming back to the 17th century when they were apparently carved out of sandstone by followers of the Knights Templar. In the past, the landowners have tried to be accommodating when sects, good or evil, have asked permission to use the site.
❑ Suspect killed, ate homeless man: A man who allegedly killed and ate a homeless person traveled to Lynn Haven where he was arrested, Lynn Haven police said Wednesday. Tyree Smith, 34, of Bridgeport, Conn., told a family member that he killed the victim with a hatchet, police wrote in a news release. Smith, who was covered in blood at the time, added that “after he bludgeoned the victim he took pieces of brain matter and his eye, which he consumed,” police said.
❑ Millions were in germ war tests: The Ministry of Defence turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public. A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain’s biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979. Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told. While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments. The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any ‘inquisitive inquirer’ the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution.
❑ Red Spotlights to Mark ‘Precrime’ Suspects on Streets of New Jersey: In a glowing review of the rising prevalence of high-tech big brother surveillance gadgets in police force use, the Associated Press reports that East Orange, New Jersey plans to cut crime by highlighting suspects with a red-beamed spotlight– before any crime is committed– a “pre-crime” deterrent to be mounted on nearby street lights or other fixtures.
❑ Radioactive material stolen in Egypt: The theft this week of radioactive material from a nuclear power plant under construction in Egypt has highlighted once again the dangers of nuclear looting in countries undergoing social upheaval. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that the material was taken from a laboratory at the El Dabaa nuclear power plant on the country’s Mediterranean coast. “According to the information we have, the items that have gone missing are low-level radioactive sources,” says an IAEA spokesperson.
❑ Is The NYPD Experimenting With Drones Over The City? Evidence Points To Yes: They’re used in war zones for surveillance and military strikes. But are there plans to deploy drones in the Big Apple to keep an eye on New Yorkers? More and more people believe it’s inevitable, reports CBS 2’s Don Dahler. Drones are unmanned aircraft that can fly at low altitudes and shoot live video — or shoot live missiles. Surveillance cameras already dot the city’s streets, but is the NYPD exploring the use of even more eyes in the skies, in the form of drones? Some evidence points to yes. A website named Gay City News posted an e-mail it says it acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s purportedly from a detective in the NYPD counterterrorism division, asking the Federal Aviation Administration about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as a law enforcement tool.
❑ This is a wireless router for your brain, and it shoots lasers: Optogenetics is a method of using light to control cells in the brain. It can be used to alter behavior, model diseases, and maybe even one day, deliver drugs right where you need them. And now, it’s wireless! With lasers! With genetic engineering, we can design cells that respond to light (from lasers or LEDs) by activating or deactivating themselves or otherwise changing their functionality. The appeal of using light to alter cells is that we can turn light on and off at the speed of, you know, light, which allows us to keep up with the speeds at which things happen inside our cells. For example, neurons in the brain send signals to other neurons using electric spikes that occur in just a few milliseconds, but with lasers, it’s possible to very precisely control (or disrupt) these messages, and this is what optogenetics is all about.
❑ A new federal report found 20 percent of Americans had mental illness: One in five Americans experienced some sort of mental illness in 2010, according to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. About 5 percent of Americans have suffered from such severe mental illness that it interfered with day-to-day school, work or family. Women were more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness than men (23 percent of women versus 16.9 percent of men), and the rate of mental illness was more than twice as likely in young adults (18 to 25) than people older than 50. About 11.4 million adult Americans suffered from severe mental illness in the past year and 8.7 million adults contemplated serious thoughts of suicide. Among them, more than 2 million made suicide plans and about 1 million attempted suicide.
❑ Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows. The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

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Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 26, 2012

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Have You Ever Wondered What A Virus Sounds Like?

✪ Ron Jeremy exclusive: Will the condom law be a wrap for porn industry in L.A.?: An HIV-positive adult film actor is hailing the Los Angeles City Council’s final approval of a city law requiring condoms on porn sets – but veteran star Ron Jeremy thinks its dirty politics. Jeremy, originally from New York, told the Daily News he believes this week’s vote is part of a larger effort to stamp out porn production in the industry’s sunny San Fernando Valley home. “Performers don’t mind wearing rubbers, but viewers don’t want to see it. It ruins the fantasy,” Jeremy said Wednesday. “This will force production to leave Los Angeles, and that’s really what the supporters want,” he claimed. The legendary lothario said local porn purveyors are already feeling the squeeze from a flood of overseas imports and low-budget, amateur productions – and new condom requirements will make competitive success even harder. He said mandatory, monthly STD testing – now the industry standard – is more than adequate to keep performers safe.
✪ Feds Say 7 Behind Celeb-endorsed Megaupload.com Ran Massive, Worldwide Piracy Ring: Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws — a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue. “This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment. The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations — Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited — of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was unsealed on Thursday, and claims that at one point Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.
✪ Google Is Already Using SOPA-Like Censorship: However, Google’s main issue with SOPA is seemingly not related to their concerns about Chinese-style web censorship becoming commonplace, but rather which entity gets to wield those powers – large transnational corporations or governments. While Google criticizes SOPA publicly, it is already privately using SOPA-like powers to unfairly marginalize legitimate web content. Google News is a content aggregator that allows users to search thousands of news sources for relevant stories. Although the aggregator includes a plethora of obscure, occasionally offensive, and barely-read websites, in November 2010 Google took the decision to de-list PrisonPlanet.com and Infowars.com from its indexed news sources. Infowars.com alone is an internationally recognized news website that gets more traffic than MSNBC.com and innumerable other big mainstream news websites.
✪ Protest against discrimination of Ethiopian Jews: Thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets of Jerusalem, in protest against what they say is discrimination against Jews of Ethiopian origin. The protest came after a recent report in the Israeli media that landlords in southern Israel had agreed not to rent or sell their real estate to Jews of Ethiopian origin.
✪ Goodbye, Fish: Rising CO2 Direct Threat to Sea Life “Driving Fish Crazy”: New research shows the disastrous consequences the world’s rising carbon dioxide levels are having on ocean life. Photo courtesy of Dr Simon Foale, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies A team of researchers from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. They document how elevated CO2 is “driving fish crazy.”
✪ WiFi signal with racist, anti-Semitic slur in Teaneck, NJ sparks police probe; signal came from rec center router: A bigot named their WiFi signal “F— All Jews and N—-” — and now cops are investigating. The hateful signal I.D. popped up on the iPhone of a 28-year-old mom inside a Teaneck, N.J. recreation center, where her 3-year-old daughter was attending dance class. The offending signal was coming from a router connected in the Richard Rodda Community Center in the the township, located 10 miles outside New York City. “When I first saw it, I said, ‘Did that say what I thought it said?,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. “I was shocked, hurt. I felt harassed.” The signal showed on her phone as it searched for an Internet connection in the center Tuesday. “I felt like I’m bringing my daughter to this place, and it should be a safe place,” she said.
✪ Scientists Create World’s Tiniest Ear: Have you ever wondered what a virus sounds like? Or what noise a bacterium makes when it moves between hosts? If the answer is yes, you may soon get your chance to find out, thanks to the development of the world’s tiniest ear. The “nano-ear,” a microscopic particle of gold trapped by a laser beam, can detect sound a million times fainter than the threshold for human hearing. Researchers suggest the work could open up a whole new field of “acoustic microscopy,” in which organisms are studied using the sound they emit.
✪ The Rise of the New Groupthink: SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
✪ NYPD developing portable body scanner for detecting concealed weapons: You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives – after all, if someone who doesn’t want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing that most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That’s why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person’s body. The NYPD announced the project yesterday.
✪ Scientists Uncover The Mathematics Of Serial Killers: Andrei Chikatilo, “The Butcher of Rostov,” was one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. Between 1978 and 1990 in the Ukraine, he committed at least 52 murders before he was caught, tried and executed. The pattern of his murders, though, was irregular. There were long periods of no activity, interrupted by several murders within a short period of time. Hoping to gain insight into serial killings to prevent similar murders, his pattern of behavior was examined by Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury at UCLA. They’ve published a paper on ArXiv with their preliminary results.
✪ Fake iPad 2s made of clay sold at Canadian stores: As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off. The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there’s no mistaking the iPad for one of the world’s oldest “tablet devices.” Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging.
✪ For rent: Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair: Anybody willing to pay the asking rent of £90,000 a year can take over the 13-hectare site in a secluded forest in eastern Poland, which during the war lay in German East Prussia. From 1941 to the end of 1944 the Wolf’s Lair was the nerve centre of the Nazi war machine owing to its proximity to the Eastern Front. The Polish Forestry Service, the owners of the camp, started looking for a tenant after the old 20-year lease expired. Hitler and his henchman built huge bombproof bunkers at the site that also housed 2,000 staff and security personnel. Although retreating German forces dynamited most of the bunkers in November 1944, their shattered shells remain a prime tourist attraction with some 180,000 visitors a year.
✪ The Great Martin Luther King Copyright Conundrum: Believe it or not, to legally watch that famous Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech — arguably one of the most hallowed moments in American history — costs $10 thanks to the twisted state of United States copyright law.
✪ World’s Largest Garment Made From Golden Spider Silk Goes on Display: Before anyone asks, no, it’s not bulletproof. But that doesn’t mean that the glistening yellow cape—the world’s largest garment made entirely from spider silk—isn’t a massive feat of engineering to marvel at (hint: it is and you should). Now on public display for the first time at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the textile gets its unearthly gleam from the undyed filaments of the golden orb spider, a species of arachnid commonly found in Madagascar. Girl power can be taken literally in this instance: Only the females produce the coveted silk.
✪ NSFW: An Alabama Fan Teabagged A Passed-Out LSU Fan At The Bourbon Street Krystal: Those of us un/fortunate enough to have visited the Krystal restaurant at the mouth of Bourbon Street in New Orleans know it’s a place where the occasionally odd, bizarre, or criminal events take place. We don’t know which of these this incident is, if not all three. That’s especially given that some people are claiming the victim in this is now dead, making the “This guy’s life is over” line uttered in the video creepy.
✪ Funk Legend Jimmy Castor Dead At 64: Funk/disco great Jimmy “The Everything Man” Castor passed away on Monday from unknown causes in Las Vegas, according to reports. Castor, a respected saxophonist, was the leader of the seminal funk/disco band the Jimmy Castor Bunch. The group was behind funk classics like the 1972 smash, “Troglodyte (Cave Man).” Though the group’s popularity faded at the end of the disco era, Castor’s music lived on through hip hop as his song “It’s Just Begun” became a staple break of the ’70s and ’80s b-boy break dancing scene. The song served as the back up music for the iconic b-boy collective the Rock Steady Crew in the 1983 film Flashdance. Eric B. and Rakim, the Ultramagnetic MCs, N.W.A., and Kanye West were among the hip hop names to sample Castor’s tunes over the years.
✪ Radioactive tissue holders found at Bed, Bath & Beyond reveal hypocrisy of failed national security: The Dual Ridge Metal Boutique tissue boxes sold at Bed, Bath & Beyond stores have been discovered to be radioactive. Made with the extremely dangerous material used to blast cancer tumors with radiation — cobalt-60 — they emit gamma rays that are known to cause both cancer and infertility. They were manufactured in India, shipped on a commercial container to New Jersey, and then distributed to Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in 20 states. How much radiation do these tissue holders emit, exactly? Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre said, on the record, that standing near one of these tissue holders for 30 minutes a day would expose you to the equivalent of “a couple of chest X-Rays” each year. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency went even further, issuing a release stating that every 10 hours spent near the product would expose you to the equivalent of one chest X-Ray
✪ Big Brother Brazil: Daniel Echaniz ‘raped Monique Amin on live TV’ after alcohol-fueled party: A housemate on Brazil’s version of Big Brother has been raped live on TV, it has been alleged. Police today confirmed they had begun an investigation and carried out a search of the studios in Rio de Janeiro, where the popular reality show is being filmed. Viewers were shocked in the early hours of Sunday to watch contestant Daniel Echaniz 31, apparently force himself on 23-year-old student Monique Amin, who had passed out drunk after a boozy party.
✪ Exchange students report shocking placements: I’ve seen many things I don’t like, including students that had been sexually abused, photographed, and forced to drink alcohol, says Danielle Grijalva, She is the head of CSFES, an organization that helps exchange students who run into problems abroad. Only this past year, 10-12 Norwegian exchange students abroad contacted her for help.
✪ EPIC Request Reveals DHS Monitoring Social Media: A Freedom of Information Act has revealed the Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract in 2010 to General Dynamics’ Advanced Information Systems in order to provide constant surveillance of social media, according to The Washington Post. The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the request, and according to a training manual that was among the documents they received, DHS engaged in monitoring comments on Facebook, Twitter and blogs to obtain public sentiment on a proposed transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a town in Michigan. The $11 million contract awarded to General Dynamics is expected to produce “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS,”
✪ MLK strip club flyer: Graphic designer under fire for ‘I Have a Dream Bash’: When Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream, this likely wasn’t what he meant. A flyer promoting a Miami strip club’s “I Have a Dream Bash” featuring MLK holding wads of cash next to scantily-clad women has its creator taking plenty of flack. Miami Beach graphic designer Jeffrey Darnell Paul says he didn’t realize the flyer, made for The Office strip club at 250 Northeast 183rd Street, would generate the controversy it has. “I wasn’t trying to disrespect anybody… it wasn’t on my mind that it would escalate to something like this,” Paul told NBC Miami Monday. “It was just supposed to be a promotional thing, it wasn’t about disgracing Martin Luther King, it wasn’t about that.”
✪ Mom forces son to wear ‘I sell drugs’ sign: An Indiana mother forced her son to wear a sign around his neck listing his law-breaking behavior and stand on a Ft. Wayne street corner for two hours earlier this week. The sign read: “I lie, I steal, I sell drugs, I don’t follow the law.” CBS New York reports that Dynesha Lax thought the punishment police had given her son when he broke the law recently wasn’t strong enough to get him to stop his behavior, so she took matters into her own hands.

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FBI vs ODB



✰ 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.