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. . Should politicians be required to wear the logos of their ‘sponsors’ like NASCAR drivers do?

This petition went up on the White House “We The People” website yesterday. They’re looking to get 100,000 signatures by April 19th. Since most politicians’ campaigns are largely funded by wealthy companies and individuals, it would give voters a better sense of who the candidate they are voting for is actually representing if the company’s logo, or individual’s name, was prominently displayed upon the candidate’s clothing at all public appearances and campaign events. Once elected, the candidate would be required to continue to wear those “sponsor’s” names during all official duties and visits to constituents. The size of a logo or name would vary with the size of a donation. For example, a $1 million dollar contribution would warrant a patch of about 4” by 8” on the chest, while a free meal from a lobbyist would be represented by a quarter-sized button. Individual donations under $1000 are exempt.

Print yourself as a gummi bear at Tokyo’s FabCafe

There’s no shortage of cafes in Tokyo, but FabCafe has a little more on its menu than most. Opened just over a year ago, the establishment offers its own laser cutter that customers can rent by the hour, and also collaborates with the 3D printer showroom upstairs. The showroom is called Cube and features several printers made by South Carolina-based 3D Systems, making FabCafe a hot spot in Tokyo for anyone who needs something fabricated but can’t justify the multi-thousand dollar outlay on a machine of their own.

. . Indian laptops that crash if users try to remove pictures of minister

One and a half million laptops given to poor students by India’s largest state government crash if their users try to remove pre-loaded screen savers featuring pictures of the new chief minister.

. . 34 Lost Cities Forgotten by Time

It’s hard to imagine how an entire city can get lost but that’s exactly what has happened to the lost cities on this list. There are actually many reasons why a city has to be abandoned. War, natural disasters, climate change and the loss of important trading partners to name a few. Whatever the cause, these lost cities were forgotten in time until they were rediscovered centuries later.

. . How to Improve Your Wi-Fi Signal Using a Soda Can in 6 Steps

When your life is nothing but trolling and viral videos, having a bad wi-fi connection can be incredibly irritating. Poor loading times, lost connections, and more can put a strain on your time browsing the internet. However, there are some ways to improve your Wi-Fi connection. However, even in the most bleak situation, there are heroes, and in this case it’s soda cans. If you’ve ever had a TV with an antenna or a radio, you’ve probably heard of the trick of using tin foil to improve the signal. Using a soda or beer can to improve your wi-fi signal works in a very similar way. The metal in the can and the shape of the can when cut open can focus the signal to and from your router. The only things that you’ll need to achieve this are a beer or soda can, a utility knife, a pair of scissors and some form of adhesive that can easily be removed like tape or adhesive putty.

. . LA County Authorities Crack Down on Nitrous Oxide

Authorities say the use of nitrous oxide as a recreational drug has grown from a rave party phenomenon to mainstream use, propelled by the ease of social media to reach young people. They say the drug has spurred fatal car accidents, rapes and teen deaths — all in the name of a temporary high that lasts just a few minutes and costs just a few dollars. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials have zeroed in on the recreational use of the drug since September, cracking down on more than 350 illegal parties, nearly all of which were selling nitrous oxide, or “noz,” spokesman Mike Parker said Thursday.

. . Million dollar bust; Three-year drug investigation nets $1.2M worth of PCP

Authorities found two-2 gallon jugs of PCP concealed in containers of Lipton Sweet Tea in Allen’s Porsche on Nov. 5, 2012 when they raided a storage locker on Lake Road in Vermilion. A loaded handgun was also recovered from the storage locker but was not stolen. Allen was arrested the same day during a traffic stop in Westlake on I-90 after authorities found another gallon of PCP in the back of his Escalade, according to Lorain County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Dennis Cavanaugh, who also heads the Lorain County Drug Task Force. A total of 111,364 milliliters of PCP were recovered in total. The drug sells for $120 to $140 a gram, said Cavanaugh.

. . Evaluating Drug Decriminalization in Portugal 12 Years Later

One gram of heroin, two grams of cocaine, 25 grams of marijuana leaves or five grams of hashish: These are the drug quantities one can legally purchase and possess in Portugal, carrying them through the streets of Lisbon in a pants pocket, say, without fear of repercussion. MDMA — the active ingredient in ecstasy — and amphetamines — including speed and meth — can also be possessed in amounts up to one gram. That’s roughly enough of each of these drugs to last 10 days. These are the amounts listed in a table appended to Portugal’s Law 30/2000. Goulão participated in creating this law, which has put his country at the forefront of experimental approaches to drug control. Portugal paved a new path when it decided to decriminalize drugs of all kinds. “We figured perhaps this way we would be better able get things under control,” Goulão explains. “Criminalization certainly wasn’t working all that well.”

. . Dallas police: Dallas is a petty shoplifter’s paradise.

As far as I can tell, police departments employ two main strategies when they’re under pressure to cut crime fast. In strategy no. 1, they flood crime zones with special police units that muscle criminals and contraband off the streets. In strategy no. 2, they simply downgrade crimes, or make it more difficult for citizens to report them. The Dallas police department chose the latter strategy last year when it announced that police officers would no longer respond in person to shoplifting incidents involving items worth $50 or less. Instead, victimized merchants were instructed to print a form off the DPD website, fill it out, and put it in the mail. According to the Dallas Morning News, the new process has been a huge hassle for merchants. “Retailers overwhelmingly described a time-consuming process with onerous paperwork requirements,” reported Tanya Eiserer and Steve Thompson.

. . Americans with Venereal Diseases Could Surpass Those with Jobs By the End of Obama’s Second Term

Over a third of Americans have a venereal disease, according to the CDC. At the present rate, those who have problems with their personal equipment will surpass those with jobs by the end of Obama’s second term. The CDC finding that 110,197,000 Americans have an STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection) was reported by CNS News. In 2008, the last year reported, 19.8 million Americans contracted STIs.

. . Single magic mushroom ‘can change personality’

Forty-five years after Timothy Leary, the apostle of drug-induced mysticism, urged his hippie followers to “turn on, tune in and drop out”, researchers have found that magic mushrooms do change a user’s personality – for the better. The fungi have long been known for their psychedelic effects, but far from damaging the brain, the hallucinogenic drug they contain enhances feelings and aesthetic sensibilities, scientists say. The study, at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore, found that a single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, was enough to cause positive effects for up to a year. “Psilocybin can facilitate experiences that change how people perceive themselves and their environment,” said Roland Griffiths, a study author and professor of psychiatry and behavioural science at Johns Hopkins. “That’s unprecedented.”

. . Freedom in the 50 States 2013

We score all 50 states on over 200 policies encompassing fiscal policy, regulatory policy, and personal freedom. We weight public policies according to the estimated costs that government restrictions on freedom impose on their victims.

. . Computer Fraud And Abuse Act 2013: New CFAA Draft Aims To Expand, Not Reform, The ‘Worst Law In Technology’

But what’s perhaps most troubling to Internet freedom advocates is how the new CFAA even expands the law to include accessing information for an “impermissible purpose,” which means even if you have the right to access the information in the first place, it’s still considered a crime if someone deems you are misusing your access in some way. According to Kerr, a computer law expert, the language in the new CFAA would make it a felony to “lie about your age on an online dating profile if you intended to contact someone online and ask them personal questions,” or if you violate the terms of service on a government website. “In short, this is a step backward, not a step forward,” Kerr said. “This is a proposal to give DOJ what it wants, not to amend the CFAA in a way that would narrow it.”

. . SMH: Rick Ross Raps About Committing Date Rape In New Song

In the new song, “You Don’t Even Know It,” by Rocko, Future, and Rick Ross, the self-proclaimed boss drops a troubling lyric that shows he knows very little about rape. Just after he opens his verse, Ross raps: “Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it / I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.”

. . One Mexican town finds more security by throwing out the police

About two years ago, citizens in Cherán, Mexico decided to battle illegal logging and drug violence by kicking out the police and running the town according to indigenous tradition.

. . Bees Buzz Each Other, but Not the Way You Think

The electric fields that build up on honey bees as they fly, flutter their wings, or rub body parts together may allow the insects to talk to each other, a new study suggests. Tests show that the electric fields, which can be quite strong, deflect the bees’ antennae, which, in turn, provide signals to the brain through specialized organs at their bases. Scientists have long known that flying insects gain an electrical charge when they buzz around. That charge, typically positive, accumulates as the wings zip through the air—much as electrical charge accumulates on a person shuffling across a carpet. And because an insect’s exoskeleton has a waxy surface that acts as an electrical insulator, that charge isn’t easily dissipated, even when the insect lands on objects, says Randolf Menzel, a neurobiologist at the Free University of Berlin in Germany.

. . Cloud 9 or Storm Cloud? Dangers of Cloud Computing – A Reminder – with other notes on other privacy concerns

A selection of articles giving warning about the dangers of cloud computing… What’s going on with your notes, records, e-mail, photos, documents, videos, scans, etc.? Privacy, Encyption, and Government Back Doors in the Web 2.0 era Google connections to NSA/CIA Massachusetts Looking to Tax Cloud Services 51 Security Worries About Cloud Computing What’s In Your ‘Digital Wallet’? – Why They Are Pushing Digital Wallets… FBI Drive for Encryption Backdoors Is Deja Vu for Security Experts Postal Service to Host Public-Private ID Protection Network Encryption Could Drive Government to Break Into Your Cloud IRS Leaves Taxpayer Data Insecure, GAO Finds Is Your TV, Game System or Other Device Watching You? Feds: No Warrant Needed to Track Your Car with a GPS Device Driven by the Elite: Nasdaq on the Virtues of the Public Cloud The More You Encrypt, the More the Government Breaks Into Your Cloud Microsoft Details Law Enforcement Information Requests in New Report

. . Rolling Stone, February 1974 – Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman – Burroughs Interviews Bowie

This was on my mind as much as the mysterious personality of David Bowie when an Irish cabbie drove Burroughs and me to Bowie’s London home on 17 November (“Strange blokes down this part of London, mate”). I had spent the last several weeks arranging this two-way interview. I had brought Bowie all of Burroughs’ novels: Naked Lunch, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded and the rest. He’d only had time to read Nova Express. Burroughs for his part had heard only two Bowie songs, ‘Five Years’ and ‘Starman’, though he had read all of Bowie’s lyrics. Still they had expressed interest in meeting each other.

. . Let’s Talk about Sex: Victorian Anti-Masturbation Devices

Take the example to the left. This terrifying contraption is called a ‘jugum penis.’ It was designed to prevent both masturbation and ‘nocturnal incontinence.’ Should a man become aroused in the middle of the night, this contraption would clamp down, extinguishing both his desire as well as his erection in a very sudden and painful way! But why were the Victorians so obsessed with what they termed ‘self-abuse?’ Many medical practitioners during this period believed that masturbation caused a wide range of mental and physical disorders, and could even prove fatal over time. Doctors and surgeons alike devoted their lives to finding a ‘cure.’

. . Ford Figo Sexist Print Ads Photo Gallery

. . Escort arrested in penis-biting attack, charged with attempted murder

Deputies were called to the Crestwood Suites on University Boulevard after multiple 911 callers “reported screaming and growling sounds from a room on the second floor” of the hotel. They arrived to find the victim “covered in a significant amount of blood, with numerous bite wounds,” the report states. He was rushed to the Orlando Regional Medical Center trauma center. The man had “significant” bites to his penis and testicles, the report states, as well as damage to his leg, abdomen, chest and fingers. His alleged attacker, Priscilla Vaughn, “was nude, and had blood around her mouth, which had spread to her face and head,” the report states, adding Vaughn “growled and snarled” at deputies.

. . Don’t try this at home: Researchers use tDCS to release your brain’s strongest opioid painkillers

A team of international researchers headed up by the University of Michigan has used noninvasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to release endogenous opioids — the human body’s most powerful, euphoria-inducing painkillers that are very similar to opiates such as morphine. This approach is significant because releasing these opioids is as simple as strapping a couple of damp sponges to your scalp and attaching a 9-volt battery.

. . The Details Of What Information The Police Can Suck Out Of Your Phone

Of course, most people have no idea what the police can pull off of your phone when it’s searched, but the ACLU has, thankfully, revealed some documents that ICE filed in a court case. It turns out they can get quite a lot. Using a single “data extraction session” they were able to pull: call activity phone book directory information stored voicemails and text messages photos and videos apps eight different passwords 659 geolocation points, including 227 cell towers and 403 WiFi networks with which the cell phone had previously connected.

. . Montana moves to make roadkill legal to eat: Is ‘freeganism’ a good idea?

Roadkill salvage and consumption remains a fringe activity, mainly practiced by so-called “freegans” and other culinary subcultures. In Alaska, however, those who utilize soup kitchens are likely to have had a taste, since fresh roadkill is regularly given to charities. Interestingly, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which opposes most forms of hunting, has pushed states to adopt “roadkill salvage” legislation so as not to let animals go to waste.

. . NoHomo phobes.com

This website is designed as a social mirror to show the prevalence of casual homophobia in our society. Words and phrases like “faggot,” “dyke,” “no homo,” and “so gay” are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, isolation and — in some tragic cases — suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth.

. . Video: Dozens of drug users rush to dealer’s car ‘like children to an icecream van’

CCTV footage released by West Midlands Police shows dozens of people running to be first in line as a drug dealer arrives in a Birmingham street.

. . Breast Lift Massage Therapy Benefits & Techniques

How is breast massage therapy performed? Breast massage therapy is performed with the patient lying flat on her back on a massage table. If the patient so desires, the massage may be performed with the breasts covered with a cloth. However, this greatly hinders the massage therapist and reduces the effectiveness of the massage. The massage therapist will usually start by massaging the area under the breast and over the breast with the palms of the hand. At any point in time if you are feeling uncomfortable or feel that too much of less pressure is being exerted, do not hesitate to tell your therapist. No therapist can read your mind. The therapist will then move to massage the sides of the breast. The next step of the massage is the breast lift. The therapist places his or her hands under your breasts and gently lifts them towards the ceiling. This helps to relieve stress from the breasts and promotes gentle stretching. Finally the therapist will gently massage the pectoral muscles.

. . Dog Brings Home Dead Baby In Oklahoma City

A dog in Oklahoma City came home on Saturday carrying a dead newborn in its mouth. A house sitter, whose name has not been released, was at the home at the time, KOCO reported. The house sitter told KFOR that the dog, a 6-month-old mixed-breed named Luke, showed up at the door with the body of a three to five-pound infant in his mouth. “He was carrying it just like a momma pup,” she told the station, “and laid it at my feet.”

. . T.J. Lane sentenced to life in prison in Chardon High School shootings (video, gallery)

T.J. Lane will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing three students and wounding three others in the Chardon High School cafeteria Feb. 27, 2012. Before his sentence, Lane, wearing a white T-shirt with the word “killer” written across the front, said: “This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. F— all of you.”

. . Cooking in Your Hotel Room

If any Foodie Flick could blow your mind, it’s this one. British comedian George Egg recently posted a YouTube video in which he cooks dinner in his hotel room. We’re not talking about a quick salad and sandwich here. Without bringing any special tools from home, Egg sweeps aside the overpriced room-service menu and makes pasta and biscuits in his room — from scratch. No hot plate. No microwave. If it wasn’t captured in a video, we probably wouldn’t believe it. The entrée? A tortellini pasta with spinach, rocket and crème fraîche that he cooks in the room’s tea kettle. This might not leave a desirable taste for the next poor sap who makes tea, but it’s a rather ingenious way to boil noodles. (He adds a raw egg yolk in a nod to carbonara; emulate that at your own risk.) Oh, but there’s more: Egg ups the ante by making biscuits (kneaded, risen, the whole 9 yards), using a clothes iron. Color us a new shade of impressed.

. . How to brew beer in a coffee maker, using only materials commonly found on a modestly sized oceanographic research vessel

The tools you need are simple: an electric drip coffee maker with hot plate, a coffee filter, 2 1-liter glass sample jars with air-tight lids, 2 handkerchiefs, 2 rubber bands, and a source of clean (preferably R/O) water. You’ll have to be more creative with your ingredients. Your need grains, malt, hops, and something for flavor. Simple grains such as those found in common cereals – Raisin Bran, Cracked Wheat, Kashi, whatever you can find – are decent sources of starches and usually contain enough enzymes to break the most complex proteins down. Fruit and nuts will add flavor, but are not important. The grains should be ground as fine as possible, rolled under a rolling pin or crushed in a mortar and pestle. The smaller the grains the greater the reactive surface area.

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File under Bowie, Culture, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death, Sex

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on March 31, 2013

Tags: 3d, abuse, ACLU, ADD, Alienation, amphetamines, Author, baby, bad, Baltimore, battle, Bear, Beat, Beer, Bees, Berlin, Better, Blood, blow, Body, body parts, Book, brain, Break, breast, Breasts, Can, Car, Case, CCTV, Cell Phone, Children, Clean, Clothes, Clothing, Cocaine, Coffee, color, comedian, computer, Concealed, consumption, contraband, court, Crack, Crash, Crime, criminals, Cutter, damage, Date, Date rape, Dating, David, David Bowie, Dead, dealer, Digital, Dog, door, dose, Draft, Drug, Drug Dealer, Drugs, Ecstasy, egg, electric, encryption, enforcement, erection, establishment, Experimental, extraction, Face, FBI, FEAR, felony, footage, form, Found, fraud, Free, Freedom, Fruit, geolocation, Glass, glitter, Godfather, Google, Government, GPS, Hallucinogenic, handgun, High, High School, hippie, Home, homophobia, honey, Hot, Hotel, Human, Ice, Illegal, information, Insect, Insects, International, Internet, investigation, Isolation, Killing, Lake, Laser, Legal, Logos, London, Los Angeles, machine, Magic, Mainstream, Man, Marijuana, masturbate, masturbation, MDMA, Media, Medical, Medicine, metal, Meth, Mexican, Mexico, Michigan, Microsoft, mirror, Murder, Mushroom, Mushrooms, Naked, NASCAR, Natural, Natural Disaster, Network, NOT, official, Online, Opioids, organs, Painkillers, Party, PCP, Penis, Period, person, phenomenon, phone, Photo, Photos, Pictures, Police, Police Officers, Poor, Prison, privacy, Professor, Protection, psilocybin, Psychedelic, Rape, Rave, Recreational, Report, Research, Revealed, Rick Ross, Roadkill, Rocket, Rolling, Ross, rubber, Rush, Sandwich, School, Science, Screaming, Security, SeMeNSPeRmS, Service, Sex, Sexual, Shoplifting, shortage, Social, Soda, Some, something, Special, Speed, SPeRmS, spread, Steve, stimulation, Streets, stress, Strongest, Subculture, suck, Suicide, Surf, Sweet, System, taste, Teen, Teenage, Testicles, Therapy, time, Timothy Leary, tin, Tokyo, traffic, trauma, treatment, Trick, TV, University, US, Venereal Disease, Victorian, Video, Videos, Violence, Warning, warrant, waste, website, White, White House, Wild, Young, YouTube

The Worst Of 2011




★ 2011 Worst Police Misconduct Video of the Year Reader’s Poll: Once again it’s time for our annual “Worst Police Misconduct Videos of the Year” reader’s poll. Here we post some, but not all, of the over 80 videos associated with claims of police misconduct that we were able to present on our site in 2011. While some of the incidents tied to these videos did not occur in 2011, the videos for those reports weren’t released to the public until this year so they are included.
★ Deaths From Terrorism Compared To Other Things: Here are the chances of a few things killing you in the US compared:; Terrorism ———————— 1 in 3,500,000; Tobacco ————————- 1 in 726; All Accidents ——————- 1 in 2,500; Alcohol ————————— 1 in 2827; Cancer —————————- 1 in 540
★ Surfers to be tested for drugs: In the 1960s and 1970s, it was the counter culture’s sport of choice. With the long hair and beach bum lifestyle came marijuana and LSD. But surfing is set for a radical image change as its international governing body prepares to introduce comprehensive drug testing for professionals for the first time. Amid growing evidence that the sport’s drug culture has gripped even some of its elite athletes, the Association of Surfing Professionals will in 2012 roll out a policy for screening competitors and officials for performance-enhancing and recreational drugs. The move comes after the death of the triple world champion Andy Irons in November 2010. A postmortem found he died from a heart attack and “acute mixed drug ingestion”. Traces of methadone, methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth, and a metabolite of cocaine were found in his bloodstream.
★ Donna Simpson, World’s Heaviest Mom At 600 Pounds, Closes Pay-Per-View Eating Site: Donna Simpson has taken another step towards changing her life and, perhaps, changing her image. The Plain Dealer in Cleveland reports that the Guinness World Record holder for “world’s heaviest mom” has decided to shut down her pay-per-view eating site where, for years, internet users have been shelling out $19 a month to watch Simpson eat. “I realized that I was their fantasy,” Simpson told the Plain Dealer. “Here I was getting bigger and bigger, and they had their thin wives, with 2½ kids and a picket fence.”
★ How Marijuana May Drive the Brain into Psychosis: Two ingredients in marijuana have opposite effects on certain regions of the brain, according to a new study. One chemical, called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), increases the brain processes that can lead to symptoms of psychosis, while another compound, called cannabidiol, may negate such symptoms, according to the study. Moreover, the findings are the first to use images of the brain to demonstrate that the reason symptoms of psychosis arise in marijuana users may be because THC interferes with the brain’s ability to distinguish between stimuli that are important, and those that aren’t, according to the study.
★ Shortage of ADHD drug Adderall seen persisting: The DEA authorizes a certain amount of the API in Adderall – mixed amphetamine salts – to be released to drugmakers each year based on what the agency considers to be the country’s legitimate medical need. Increasingly that estimate is coming into conflict with what companies themselves say they need to meet demand for the drug, which is reaching all-time highs. In 2010, more than 18 million prescriptions were written for Adderall, up 13.4 percent from 2009, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescription data.
★ White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars: Forget Kenya. Never mind the secret madrassas. The sinister, shocking truth about Barack Obama’s past lies not in east Africa, but in outer space. As a young man in the early 1980s, Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. The future president teleported there, along with the future head of Darpa. That’s the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at Darpa’s behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.
★ BBC criticised for naming panda as a woman of the year: The BBC has come in for ridicule after it included a giant panda called Sweetie alongside Pippa Middleton and Adele in its list of the 12 women of the year.
Genius Cops Caught Apparently Planting Evidence By Own Dash Camera: Here’s a video of two Utica, N.Y. police officers searching a car during a traffic stop. At 1:02, one officer pulls a small baggie of something out of his pocket and ducks into the car; at 1:31, he emerges again, holding the same baggie. Oops! (Update: Police have responded, saying that the full video shows the officer had previously found the baggie on the suspect and placed it in his pocket.)
★ Five Solved ‘Unexplained Mysteries’ of 2011: Each year brings new puzzles and mysteries to challenge skeptics and put our wits to the test. Sometimes mysteries take weeks, months, or even years or decades to solve, and while most of the public’s attention naturally focuses on the still-mysterious, it’s always worth reflecting on former mysteries. This past year saw two high-profile cryptozoological (monster) mysteries finally solved, that of the Puerto Rican chupacabra and the French Beast of Gévaudan. There were also three new UFO / alien cases that made international news before eventually being solved (in Russia, Isreal, and Los Angeles). I participated in solving several of these mysteries. Here’s to a new year of fresh investigation, and hopefully 2012 will end with an even longer list of solved mysteries!
★ Vandals steal squirrel monkey ‘Banana Sam’ from S.F. Zoo: A $5,000 reward is being offered for the return of Banana-Sam, a squirrel monkey who was snatched from his cage at the San Francisco Zoo overnight. Zoo and police officials are searching for the gold-colored monkey, who appeared to have been stolen late Thursday or early Friday when vandals broke in to the zoo and cut the netting around the squirrel monkey pen. “This was a criminal act of vandalism and trespassing, and we are working with the police to identify the perpetrators,” said Tanya Peterson, the zoo’s executive director.
★ Chinese man spends $16,000 on sword for virtual martial arts game: Whilst the season of giving might be over for yet another year, it seems one computer gamer has marked the end of the festivities by treating himself to one final Christmas gift. The avid gamer spent a staggering $16,000 on a virtual sword – the only one of its kind, which he will use when he eventually begins playing a martial arts game that has not yet gone on sale in the Far East. The man who won the auction will now be able to slay characters using his sabre when the highly-anticipated martial-arts game Age of Wulin is released in Mainland China.
★ Tell Congress To Undo The NDAA, Ban Indefinite Military Detention Of Americans: President Obama just signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law despite startling provisions that will allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens. It’s a travesty, defying basic principles of justice and due process in perhaps the most extreme respect our nation has ever seen. Thankfully, several lawmakers are keeping up the fight. Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to undo these provisions of the NDAA, in the form of the Due Process Guarantee Act. We need to urge other Senators to support it. The Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011 amends the Non-Detention Act of 1971 by providing that a Congressional authorization for the use of military force does not authorize the indefinite detention—without charge or trial—of U.S. citizens who are apprehended domestically.
★ Drug-sniffing dogs an unconstitutional search?: Franky the drug dog’s supersensitive nose is at the heart of a question being put to the U.S. Supreme Court: Does a police dog’s sniff outside a house give officers the right to get a search warrant for illegal drugs, or is the sniff an unconstitutional search? Florida’s highest state court has said Franky’s ability to detect marijuana growing inside a Miami-area house from outside a closed front door crossed the constitutional line. The state’s attorney general wants the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling. The justices could decide this month whether to take the case, the latest dispute about whether the use of dogs to find drugs, explosives and other illegal or dangerous substances violates the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure.
★ The evil of Aries: How astrology can be sign of future jail time: Police in Chatham-Kent, Ont., announced Wednesday that, of 1,986 people arrested so far this year, 203 were Aries, whereas just 139 were Sagittarius. It is the first time the municipality has ranked its crimes by Zodiac sign. Aries were the most arrested, with Libras in second at 189 arrests, and Virgo third at 183. The least criminal were Sagittarius (139 arrests), Aquarius (142) and Taurus (146). “You can’t really read too much into it,” says Const. Michael Pearce, a police spokesman, who used an Excell spreadsheet to classify the data. “I don’t comment too much on the Zodiac stuff because I don’t want any backlash about it. I am not drawing any conclusions about it.”
★ Detroit man sickened after eating chicken head: A Detroit man has been given his money back from a restaurant where he said he mistakenly was served a chicken head that gave his food poisoning. On Monday, Local 4 spoke with Clarence Lewis, who said he spend New Year’s Eve at the hospital after he ate a chicken tenders meal from Zorba’s Fine Food at McNichols Road and Gunston Avenue. “I noticed a crunch feel, but I didn’t know what it was, and it just went down and cut my throat. I just gagged it up,” he said. Lewis had choked on a chick’s head which was fried up with the rest of the chicken tenders meal.
★ Jamaican dancehall culture: Soul Jazz Recordings published the book which chronicles writer and photographer Beth Lesser’s travels around Jamaica in the 80s, telling the story for which the compilation provides a soundtrack. Here is a selection of Lesser’s images and the writer’s own captions from the book

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File under Culture, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 4, 2012

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Seventies Sidewalk Surfin’

► Scientists grow sperm in laboratory dish: The development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm. Researchers in Germany and Israel were able to grow mouse sperm from a few cells in a laboratory dish. In a world first a team headed by Professor Stefan Schlatt, at Muenster University in Germany, were able to grow sperm by using germ cells. These are the cells in testicles that are responsible for sperm production. Scientists grew the sperm by surrounding the germ cells in a special compound called agar jelly to create an environment similar to that found in testicles.
► How to fake the pledge of allegiance: “I pledge a lesson to queen’s frag and her United States of Hysteria, and to the wee puppet for witch’s hands. One Asian, under dog, invisible, with little tea and just rice for all.”
► Worlds earliest toy car and title deed on show at Mardin Museum: Archaeologist Mesut Alp said that the toy car, which is made out of stone, dates back to the late Stone Age and is thought to be 7,500 years old. The Culture and Tourism Director of Mardin, Davut Beliktay, said that the car is like a copy of cars today, adding that in its shape, the ancient toy also resembles a tractor. Beliktay also revealed that toy dolls and whistles, also made of stone, were found at sites in the area, “we believe that the whistles and dolls are 5,000 to 6,000 years old. The whistles are still in working condition,” he said.
► Death of man struck by train leads to bizarre civil case: Ruling in what it called a “tragically bizarre” case, an appeals court found that the estate of a man killed by a train while crossing the Edgebrook Metra station tracks can be held liable after a part of his body sent airborne by the collision struck and injured a bystander. In 2008, Hiroyuki Joho, 18, was hurrying in pouring rain with an umbrella over his head, trying to catch an inbound Metra train due to arrive in about five minutes when he was struck by a southbound Amtrak train traveling more than 70 mph. A large portion of his body was thrown about 100 feet on to the southbound platform, where it struck Gayane Zokhrabov, then 58, who was waiting to catch the 8:17 a.m. train to work. She was knocked to the ground, her leg and wrist broken and her shoulder injured.
► Gary Webb’s Drug War Reporting Vindicated: Douglas Farah was in El Salvador when the San Jose Mercury News broke a major story in the summer of 1996: The Nicaraguan Contras, a confederation of paramilitary rebels sponsored by the CIA, had been funding some of their operations by exporting cocaine to the United States. One of their best customers was a man nicknamed “Freeway Rick” — Ricky Donnell Ross, then a Southern California dealer who was running an operation the Los Angeles Times dubbed “the Wal-Mart of crack dealing.”
► New Year’s Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own: The New Year is upon us, and you might be partaking in the tradition of making a resolution for the coming year. This year, why not make a resolution to protect your data privacy with one of the most powerful tools available? Commit to full disk encryption on each of your computers. Many of us now have private information on our computers: personal records, business data, e-mails, web history, or information we have about our friends, family, or colleagues. Encryption is a great way to ensure that your data will remain safe when you travel or if your laptop is lost or stolen. Best of all, it’s free. So don’t put off taking security steps that can help protect your private data. Join EFF in resolving to encrypt your disks 2012. Here’s some basic info about full disk encryption. You can read this and much more (including information on password security) in our recent whitepaper on protecting privacy at the border.
► The Perfect Score: Cheating on the SAT: For Sam Eshaghoff, getting a high score on the SAT college admissions exam was more than a point of pride. It was a lucrative business. As Alison Stewart reports, other students paid Eshaghoff up to $2,500 each to take their tests using easily manufactured fake IDs. His scam came crashing down in fall 2011, when he was arrested for criminal impersonation and fraud. Eshaghoff has since accepted a plea deal, but the case still raises major questions about the integrity of the test itself.
► Bad Teachers: Weird Education Crimes of 2011: Gang Bang Teacher: Cops Say She Had Sex With Five Students & Filmed It. Science Teacher Accused of Sex With 17-Year-Old Student. Caught in the Act: Cops Say Teacher Seen Having Sex With Student. Biology Teacher Accused of Sexy Lesson. Bad Teacher: Police Say Substitute Urinated in Front of Class. Cops: Teacher Caught Doing It With ‘Love Doll’ on School Property.
► Russian officials rattled by breach at rocket plant: Russia’s deputy prime minister vowed Thursday to punish “sleepy” security officials after bloggers posted dozens of photos of an apparently unguarded strategic military rocket motor factory near Moscow. Blogger Lana Sator said she and friends met not a soul, much less any security guards, as they roamed around state rocket-maker Energomash’s plant, snapping pictures, on five separate night-time excursions in recent months. She posted almost 100 pictures of decrepit-looking hardware from inside a rusted engine-fuel testing tower, the plant’s control room and even its roof at lana-sator.livejournal.com
► Facebook Responsible for A Third of Divorces in UK?: A recent survey conducted by a UK based divorce website disclosed that 33 per cent behaviour divorce petitions filed cite Facebook as a cause for filling for divorce in 2011. In 2009 this figure was 20 per cent. 5000 people were surveyed by Divorce-Online, the UK divorce website, during 2009 and 2011 covering Facebook as a means to check behaviour of spouse with the opposite sex and spouses using the social networking platform to comment about their exes post the separation.
► Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War: As the drums of war begin to beat once again in Iran, Syria, the South China Sea, and other potential hotspots and flashpoints around the globe, concerned citizens are asking how a world so sick of bloodshed and a population so tired of conflict could be led to this spot once again. To understand this seeming paradox, we must first understand the centuries-long history of how media has been used to whip the nation into wartime frenzy, dehumanize the supposed enemies, and even to manipulate the public into believing in causes for war that, decades later, were admitted to be completely fictitious.
► U.S. double standard surfaces in Strait of Hormuz: What was truly comical was the manner in which numerous U.S. military pundits magnified the actual threat the primitive Iranian navy poses. Contrary to those gross exaggerations, the fact is that the most serious threat in Iran’s maritime arsenal is its three small, aging, Soviet-era Kilo-class submarines. It is believed that at best, only two of the vessels are even still seaworthy, and the shallow, narrow Strait of Hormuz would preclude the effective use of any submarines. As for its surface fleet, Iran does possess a few fast missile patrol boats and an additional ad hoc flotilla of designated suicide attack boats. The majority of these craft are little more than rigid-hulled inflatables mounted with a variety of light machine-guns, packed with explosives and crewed by militia zealots. Opposing this cockleshell Flintstones navy is the mighty U.S. Fifth Fleet. Consisting of more than 20 warships, including aircraft carriers and missile cruisers
► Lego Concentration Camp: “Each box contains a set of bricks, that can be used to build the element of a concentration camp as shown on the box. All elements in the sets as well as those depicted on the boxes have either been taken from the mass-produced sets of LEGO bricks, or have been slightly altered by the artist. The prisoners are played by smiling skeletons from the “Pirate” set, while slightly modified figurines from the “Police Station” set appear as tormenters. In the upper-left corner of each box we find the following statement: “This work by Zbigniew Libera has been sponsored by Lego” – as the project was made possible thanks to the bricks presented by the polish department of the Danish company. Upon its presentation in Denmark, LEGO headquarters has launched legal complaints against the artist, however as a result of a fierce press campaign it has decided to drop the lawsuit. The controversies concerning Libera’s LEGO also appeared in Poland, yet those where of a somewhat different character.
► This is What Happens When You Give Thousands of Stickers to Thousands of Kids: This December, in a surprisingly simple yet ridiculously amazing installation for the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, artist Yayoi Kusama constructed a large domestic environment, painting every wall, chair, table, piano, and household decoration a brilliant white, effectively serving as a giant white canvas. Over the course of two weeks, the museum’s smallest visitors were given thousands upon thousands of colored dot stickers and were invited to collaborate in the transformation of the space, turning the house into a vibrantly mottled explosion of color. How great is this? Given the opportunity my son could probably cover the entire piano alone in about fifteen minutes. The installation, entitled The Obliteration Room, is part of Kusama’s Look Now, See Forever exhibition that runs through March 12.
► DARPA’s New Spy Satellite Could Provide Real-Time Video From Anywhere on Earth: “It sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake” could be the theme song for a new spy satellite being developed by DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s latest proof-of-concept project is called the Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE), and would provide real-time images and video of any place on Earth at any time — a capability that, so far, only exists in the realm of movies and science fiction. The details of this huge eye-in-the-sky look like something right out of science fiction, as well, and it would be interesting to determine if it could have applications for astronomy as well.
► Skateboard Songs Of The 70′s: “Skateboard” (as it is known in Brazil) is a sport that has emerged in the late 50 invented by surfers as a hobby in times of low tide. With the passage of time was the sportive will gain new fans and winning characteristics. In the mean time (years 50 and 60) there were a few musical recordings exploring the theme of skateboarding, such as “Skatebordin ‘Pt 1 & Pt 2″ dual “Jan & Dean.” But the boom of skateboarding was only to give even in the late ’70s, when the sport received a veritable flood of newcomers, and soon to greatly increase the number of songs exploring this new market of skaters. The recordings ranging from power pop, bubble gum, glam, disco, funk or any musical style that could match the atmosphere that the young skate ever breathed, with a strong influence of surf music, especially the Beach Boys.

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File under Culture, Music, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death, Sex, Skateboarding

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 3, 2012

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Burn, Baby, Burn

◆ Four-time Texas lottery winner may have beat the system

A four-time Texas lottery winner’s timing is priceless.Joan Ginther, 63, has been dubbed “the luckiest woman on earth,” having scratched her way to four jackpots worth a total of $20.4 million.

Ginther, a reclusive, Stanford-educated math genius, has had winning tickets in 1993, 2006, 2008 and 2010. Now, Harper’s magazine theorizes that the Lone Star legend skillfully charted when and where winning tickets might show up.
◆ Fukushima Unit 3 MOX likely melted through

MOX fuel that was believed to have been kept cool at the bottom of one of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after its core melted is believed to have breached the vessel after melting again, a study said Monday.The study by Fumiya Tanabe, an expert in nuclear safety, said most of reactor 3′s mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel may have dribbled into the containment vessel underneath, and if so, the current method being used to cool the reactor will have to be rethought. This could force Tokyo Electric Power Co. to revise its schedule for containing the five-month-old disaster.
◆ Study says nuclear fuel at Fukushima reactor possibly melted twice

Fuel inside one of the reactors at the crippled nuclear complex in Fukushima Prefecture, which was believed to have been kept cool at the bottom of the pressure vessel after its core suffered a meltdown, has possibly breached the vessel after melting again at the bottom of the vessel, an expert’s study showed Monday.
◆ Big Pharma’s Crooked Crusade to Push Pills on Little Kids

In the past decade, America’s pharmaceutical industry has knowingly marketed dozens of dangerous drugs to millions of children, a group that executives apparently view as a lucrative, untapped market for their products. Most kids have no one to look out for their interests except anxious parents who put their trust in doctors. As it turns out, that trust is often misplaced. Big Pharma spends massive amounts to entertain physicians, send them on luxury vacations and ply them with an endless supply of free products. As a result, hundreds of thousands of American kids—some as young as three years old—have become dependent on amphetamines like Adderall and a pharmacopeia of other drugs that allegedly treat depression, insomnia, aggression and other mental health disorders.
◆ Michael Moore to Obama: ‘Show some guts,’ arrest S&P head

On his Twitter feed Monday, the Oscar-winning film director also blamed the 2008 economic collapse on Standard & Poor’s — apparently because it and other credit-ratings agencies did not downgrade mortgage-based bonds, which encouraged the housing bubble and let it spread throughout the economy.“Pres Obama, show some guts & arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors. These criminals brought down the economy in 2008& now they will do it again,” Mr. Moore wrote.

Standard & Poor’s, one of three key debt agencies, stripped the U.S. federal government of its AAA status Friday night and reduced it to AA+ for the first time in the nation’s history.

Mr. Moore went on to note that the “owners of S&P are old Bush family friends,” continuing a theme he has developed through several films about capitalism as essentially a crony system for the rich and Wall Street, especially the Bush family.
◆ Massachussetts takes up anti-liberty torch

The hypocrisy of police trying to stop citizens from videotaping their public actions should be obvious in this, the Patriot Act Age. From warrantless wiretapping to data mining to the proliferation of red-light cameras, the Surveillance State is clearly on the march. And yet, when citizens occasionally exercise their constitutional rights and turn the camera on the Surveillance State itself, they increasingly face the threat of police retribution.
◆ Will RIM help British police ID BlackBerry users who rioted, looted?

Well, this could pretty much rule out a marketing campaign touting BlackBerry as the smartphone of choice for rioters. Which is too bad, because Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) could use a new demographic stronghold to reverse its dwindling market share.Media reports since the weekend’s rioting in sections of London following the shooting death of a local man by police have focused on the roles Twitter and BlackBerry’s IM service played in stoking the mayhem.

Now RIM has officially responded. BlackBerry UK, the “official UK Twitter account” for Canada-based RIM, early Monday tweeted:

We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.

So how can RIM help the police identify riot and looting participants? According to The Register, “RIM can pass over decrypted versions of BBM chatter.”
◆ Kanye West Says People Look At Him ‘like Hitler’

The 34-year-old rapper known for his outbursts was the headline act at the Big Chill music festival Saturday night, where he ranted in the middle of his set about being misunderstood and underappreciated. “I walk through the hotel and I walk down the street, and people look at me like I’m (expletive) insane, like I’m Hitler,” he said. “One day the light will shine through and one day people will understand everything I ever did.”West received light boos from the crowd as a result.
◆ Digital Hit Men for Hire

Cyber attacks designed to knock Web sites off line happen every day, yet shopping for a virtual hit man to launch one of these assaults has traditionally been a dicey affair. That’s starting to change: Hackers are openly competing to offer services that can take out a rival online business or to settle a score.An ad for a DDoS attack service.

There are dozens of underground forums where members advertise their ability to execute debilitating “distributed denial-of-service” or DDoS attacks for a price. DDoS attack services tend to charge the same prices, and the average rate for taking a Web site offline is surprisingly affordable: about $5 to $10 per hour; $40 to $50 per day; $350-$400 a week; and upwards of $1,200 per month.
◆ California Mother Charged With Murder After Breastfeeding on Meth

Charges against a California mother have been upgraded from manslaughter to second-degree murder this week after evidence at preliminary hearings suggested that she knowingly endangered her infant’s life by breast-feeding while using methamphetamine.Six-week-old Anthony Acosta III died last year after an allegedly lethal amount of the drug was passed to him when his mother, Maggie Jean Wortman, 26, continued to breast-feed despite her meth habit.
◆ Man dead after firing on police in fiery Poconos standoff

Battling an addiction to bath salts, Kish took his mother and two others hostage in his mother’s Chestnuthill Township house Thursday afternoon. After he wounded a state trooper with birdshot and set fire to the house, police said, he ran outside with a gun and refused to put it down.
◆ How to Write a Book in Three Days: Lessons from Michael Moorcock

In the early days of Michael Moorcock’s 50-plus-years career, when he was living paycheck-to-paycheck, he wrote a whole slew of action-adventure sword-and-sorcery novels very, very quickly, including his most famous books about the tortured anti-hero Elric. In 1992, he published a collection of interviews conducted by Colin Greenland called Michael Moorcock: Death is No Obstacle, in which he discusses his writing method. In the first chapter, “Six Days to Save the World”, he says those early novels were written in about “three to ten days” each, and outlines exactly how one accomplishes such fast writing.
◆ Smugglers using creative ways to bring drugs into South Florida

From subs to nuts, in wigs, sculpture, fruit and “wearable heroin,” drug smugglers are finding more creative ways to conceal their bootlegged goods.
◆ Chocoholic fish: Giant Gourami Gary: Kit Kats: Sea Life London Aquarium

Aquarium staff have managed to wean a chocoholic giant fish onto a healthier diet after inheriting the gourami, raised entirely on Kit Kats by its owners.
◆ 4 men arrested in LA-to-NY cocaine smuggling ring

The prosecutor said police seized $3 million worth of cocaine, $900,000 in cash, steroids, money counters and other paraphernalia from several locations. Also seized were eight vehicles, including a Mercedes-Benz and two Cadillac SUVs.Besides the secret compartments, the ring took extra precautions by placing the vehicles on car carriers ordinarily used by legitimate auto dealers. The car carrier companies weren’t aware that drugs were being shipped inside the vehicles, authorities said.
◆ Kings of Leon bandmates “urge Caleb Followill to enter rehab”

Caleb admitted: “We would wake up at 3pm, soundcheck, have dinner and drink two bottles of wine. We would drink another before we went on stage, take a bunch of pills, drink another bottle on stage followed by a bowl of cocaine.”
◆ Riots: the underclass lashes out

This is the most arcane of uprisings and the most modern. Its participants, marshalled by Twitter, are protagonists in a sinister flipside to the Arab Spring. The Tottenham summer, featuring children as young as seven, is an assault not on a regime of tyranny but on the established order of a benign democracy. One question now hangs over London’s battle-torn high streets. How could this ever happen?
◆ Did George Soros win 10/1 return on S&P’s US credit rating downgrade?

A mystery investor or hedge fund reportedly made a bet of almost $1billion at odds of 10/1 last month that the U.S. would lose its AAA credit rating.Now questions are being asked of whether the trader had inside information before placing the $850million bet in the futures market.

There were mounting rumours that investor George Soros, 80, famously known as ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’, could be involved.
◆ Twitter users could be arrested for ‘inciting’ London rioting and looting

Twitter users in the United Kingdom who posted inflammatory messages encouraging others to engage in violence could be arrested, according to Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh.Kavanagh told The Telegraph that officers were investigating messages posted on Twitter and would “absolutely” consider arresting users who helped incite some of the worst rioting in the British capital in years.
◆ Honey-Soaked Naked Girls Were Filmed By Pastor

Using a hidden video camera, a Texas man filmed four naked, honey-drenched teenage girls while they showered at a church where he worked as a youth pastor.But since the statute of limitations has already expired, prosecutors today were forced to dismiss felony charges lodged against Thomas Fortenberry, who allegedly did the surreptitious filming in November 2007 at the Greater Harvest Community Church in Pasadena.
◆ China’s New Lucrative Business: Dead Babies Turn into Stamina Booster Pills

Chinese hospitals and abortion clinics that are connected to the business immediately notify pharmaceutical companies when a baby dies, mostly because of a still birth or an abortion.The companies purchase the baby corpses and store them in some family’s refrigerator to avoid suspicion. The next step in this highly secretive process is putting the corpses in a medical drying microwave and grinding them into pills. The ground baby powder is then put in a capsule, ready to be sold as a stamina enhancer, according to the SBS team.
◆ Translucent Ants Photographed Eating Colored Liquids

Scientist Mohamed Babu from Mysore, India captured beautiful photos of these translucent ants eating a specially colored liquid sugar. Some of the ants would even move between the food resulting in new color combinations in their stomachs.
◆ 10 Beautiful Chinese Women Executed Over the Past 30 Years
◆ London burning: history just went sci-fi

History always repeats itself, said Hegel. But he forgot to add, commented Karl Marx, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. What Marx meant in his essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is that history does not repeat itself at all. It only appears to, because human imaginations cannot keep up with the speed of change, so they dress it in costumes borrowed from the past. It is not the 2011 rioters who are dressing in history’s robes – they appear to have modelled themselves more on recent zombie movies – but commentators, who are reaching for analogies of 1980s socialists to attribute these troubles to familiar causes.It is worth looking at images of London’s violent weekend and asking how they make you feel. Far from fitting into any historical model, they seem to me to come from an imagined London, a horror scenario of the city as a blazing wilderness. Sci-fi nightmares of urban catastrophe resonate with these pictures because this is a city made strange.
◆ Texas Town to Recycle Urine

The drought in Texas has gotten so severe municipal water managers have turned to a once untenable idea: recycling sewage water.”When you talk about toilet-to-(water) tank it makes a lot of people nervous and grossed out,” says Terri Telchik, who works in the city manager’s office in Big Spring, Texas.

Water for the town’s 27,000 residents comes through the Colorado River Municipal Water District, which has broken ground on a plant to capture treated wastewater for recycling.

“We’re taking treated effluent (wastewater), normally discharged into a creek, and blending it with (traditionally supplied potable) water,” district manager John Grant told Discovery News.
◆ Jay-Z and Kanye West album deal irks indie retailers

Watch The Throne will be released first on iTunes before the Best Buy chain’s exclusive deal to sell the album nearly two weeks ahead of other music retailers.The letter says the deal will do “great damage” to more than 1,700 record stores and calls for equal access.

Jay-Z’s spokesman had no comment.

Posted by the organisers of Record Store Day, the letter has been signed by shops across the US and calls the release plan a “short-sighted strategy”.
◆ Mexican Smugglers Nearly Interrupt California Surf Contest

Three Mexican nationals attempted to illegally land their boat on California’s Huntington Beach Sunday — about a mile away from where crowds were forming to watch a professional surfing contest.Lifeguards spotted the small fishing boat at around 8:30 a.m., but when the men realized they had been spotted, they turned back to sea and were seen throwing a package overboard, The Orange County Register reported.
◆ Racy Cathay Pacific Cockpit Pictures Prompt Investigation (VIDEO)

Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways is launching an investigation into pictures that appear to show a pilot receiving oral sex from a flight attendant while in a commercial airplane cockpit.Low quality photos of the act, featuring a woman in a red outfit not unlike those of Cathay Pacific’s flight attendants and a pilot, have circulated through Chinese media. According to some reports, the two are a couple.
◆ Government agents stole $9,000 in cash during Rawesome Foods raid, says witness

A witness on the scene during the Rawesome Foods raid has publicly stated that an agent of the Specialized Surveillance & Enforcement Bureau of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health stole $9,000 in cash from James Stewart after placing him in handcuffs. The $9,000 in cash was about to be used to acquire food products (honey, watermelons, eggs and others) that are offered to club members of Rawesome Foods.During the raid on Rawesome Foods, $4,500 in cash was taken from the store and $9,000 confiscated from James Stewart, but only the $4,500 in cash was noted on the warrant. California law requires that all items seized at the raid are noted on the warrant, but the LA County Department of Public Health failed to note the $9,000, meaning there is no longer any paper trail for this cash that was taken from James.
‪◆ Metropolis II by Chris Burden (the movie)‬‏

A short doc about a kinetic sculpture that took four years to build. We had the honor of spending three days in Chris Burden’s studio filming this sculpture before it was moved to the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA) where it is being reinstalled.
The installation opens fall 2011.
◆ Italian town’s kebab ban enrages migrant community

“To ban kebabs in Cittadella is like forbidding pizza in Paris or New York,” said Abdallah Khezraji, a member of the Consulta Regionale Immigrazione for Italy’s Veneto region.On Friday, the town council of Cittadella passed a law stopping to stop the issue of licenses to vendors wishing to sell kebabs in the medieval walled city in Veneto.

‘Protecting tradition’

“This food is certainly not part of our tradition and of our identity,” said Mayor Massimo Bitonci of the anti-immigration Northern League party, which shares power in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition.

Bitonci said kebabs were “not suited to our historic center [because of] the way in which the foods are eaten, the smell they give off.”

He also justified the ban on health grounds, saying the ordinance targeted “dishes cooked and then left in the open for a long time.”
◆ Twelve Triggers Driving Mankind Towards World Government

What I am about to describe in this article are not “predictions” of any kind. Rather, they are forecasts based on available data and common sense projections of where the Global Power Elite are trying to take the world, why they are doing so, and what they hope to achieve. The more they keep the general public in the dark, the higher their chances of success.Doing this kind of forecast is rather like understanding the weather. If on a hot summer day you look out your window and see dark clouds and lightning on the horizon, and suddenly a strong, damp ozone-filled gust blows your way, it’s basic common sense to say that you shouldn’t be forecasting “sunny and calm today,” but rather “drenching rain, thunder, lightning and hail.”