TV

James Brown Future Shock Dance TV Show 1970′s

James Brown’s short-lived “Soul Train” style dance show that aired on WTBS in Atlanta from 1976-1978.

File under Arts 'n Crafts, Blast From The Past, Blaxploitation, Culture, Fashion, Influences, Massive Consumption of Drugs, Music, SeMeN SPeRmS Approved, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS ViDeO CLuB

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

Tags: 1970s, 70's, African American, African American Vernacular English, Angel Dust, Atlanta, Break Dancing, Clowning, Dance, Dancing, Disco, Disco Still Sucks, Funk, Future, Hip-Hop, James Brown, PCP, R&B, Shock, Soul, style, Sweater, TV

Born Innocent (1974) Linda Blair Gets Raped In Juvie 70′s TV Movie

Born Innocent was a television movie which was first aired under the NBC World Premiere Movie umbrella on September 10, 1974. Highly publicized and controversial, Born Innocent was the highest-rated television movie to air in the United States in 1974. The movie dealt with the physical, psychological and sexual abuse of a teenage girl, and included graphic content never before seen on American television at that time.

The movie starred Linda Blair (fresh off her success with The Exorcist) as a teenage runaway, who was eventually sentenced to do time in a juvenile detention center, which doubled as a reform school for the girls. Blair’s character, Christine Parker, came from an abusive home. Her father (played by Richard Jaeckel) beat her, which caused Chris to run away many times. Her mother (Kim Hunter) was unfeeling, sitting in her recliner, watching television and smoking cigarettes all day. While the movie has a morality play tone, showing the harsh effects of the detention center on a young girl, it also blames society for Christine’s downfall, as her social worker does not find out that her parents caused her to run away, and then had her sent off to reform school when she told others.

Original Airdate: Tuesday September 10, 1974 on NBC (National Broadcasting Company)

Controversial Scene
One scene in particular that gained the movie infamy was the rape of Blair’s character in the communal showers by a girl gang led by lesbian Denny (Janit Baldwin) with a plunger handle; this scene had the distinction of being the first all-female rape scene aired on American television. This scene was not glossed over in promotional spots for the movie; Linda Blair’s screams as she was being attacked were aired in the promos, with the announcer intoning, “She was born innocent, but that was fourteen years ago!”
The scene drew much outcry on its first airing and was eventually pulled from the movie entirely when it was blamed for the rape of a nine-year-old girl, committed by some of her peers with a glass soda pop bottle. The California Supreme Court would declare the film was not obscene, and that the network which broadcast it was not liable for the actions of the persons who committed the crime. Olivia N. v. National Broadcasting Company, 126 Cal. App.3d 488 (1981).

File under Blast From The Past, Cult Movies, Fetish, SeMeN SPeRmS Approved, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS ViDeO CLuB, Sex, Trash TV

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 29, 2012

Tags: 70's, abuse, American, attack, Beat, Blame, California, character, child, Cigarettes, Controversial, court, Crime, detention, Exorcist, Father, Female, Film, gang, Girl, Girls, graphic content, High, Innocent, juvenile detention center, Juvie, Lesbian, Linda Blair, Made For TV Movie, morality, Mother, movie, Movie Star, Network, NOT, Obscene, Olivia, parent, Play, plunger, Rape, Raped, Reform School, Runaway, scene, School, SeMeN, SeMeNSPeRmS, Sex, Sexual, Shower, Smoking, Social, society, Soda, Sodomy, Some, Supreme, Supreme Court, Teen, Teenage, Teenage Girl, Television, time, TV, United States, White, World, Young, young girl

Two Years On The Toilet



✖ ‘I felt a strong force holding me down’: Chinese woman sits on toilet for two-and-a-half YEARS: A woman who refused to leave her toilet for two-and-a-half years has spoken about why she refused to leave. Mee Yan Leong sat down on the bowl in her bathroom on March 25, 2009 and for the next 902 days, that is where she decided to eat and sleep. The 58-year-old claimed she ‘felt a force holding me down’ and said she did not understand why she felt compelled to stay in the tiled bathroom.
✖ Sick People Smell Bad: Why Dogs Sniff Dogs, Humans Sniff Humans, and Dogs Sometimes Sniff Humans: One dog’s backside is another man’s armpit—A little more may be revealed when we think about Paul Ehrlich’s body, or yours or mine for that matter. Human bodies have apocrine sweat glands too. Just as in dogs they are found in what biologists euphemistically call “the peri-anal region,” (or maybe that is the opposite of a euphemism) as well as around their genitals. But they are also found in our armpits. Our armpit odor is produced nearly exclusively by the odor of bacteria that are, in turn, fed by glands in our armpits4. In other words, when you sniff, however unintentionally, the odor of your neighbor’s armpits you are doing exactly the same thing a dog is doing when it sniffs another dog’s behind. This gets me back to Paul Ehrlich’s joke, the one about the good old days of sniffing each other, nose to tail.
✖ Miami Roofers Discover Massive Bat Colony In One Roof: Think about how many houses in South Florida have roofs with barrel tiles. Now imagine that each one contains thousands of squealing bats. In the video above, Miami roofers discover a particularly dense roosting area for bats. As noted by Buzzfeed, it conjures up visions of Temple of Doom. Bats are quite common in Florida. Local pest removal companies cite the most common types are the Brazilian, or Mexican Free-Tail Bat, and the Evening Bat.
✖ Magic mushrooms ‘could treat depression’: A clinical trial of ”magic mushroom therapy” could take place in the UK within a year following two ground-breaking studies. Doctors plan to treat depressed patients who cannot be helped by modern drugs or behaviour-based psychotherapy with the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. Psilocybin would slowly be infused into their bloodstreams while they receive a carefully tailored ”talking therapy”. The controversial trial is planned by Professor David Nutt, from Imperial College London, who three years ago was sacked as the Government’s chief drug adviser.
✖ Air Force’s Top Brain Wants a ‘Social Radar’ to ‘See Into Hearts and Minds’: Maybury calls his vision “Social Radar.” And the comparison to traditional sensors is no accident, he tells Danger Room. “The Air Force and the Navy in this and other countries have a history of developing Sonar to see through the water, Radar to see through the air, and IR [infrared] to see through the night. Well, we also want to see into the hearts and the minds of people,” says Maybury, who serves as the top science advisor to the Air Force’s top brass. But Social Radar won’t be a single sensor to discover your secret yearnings. It’ll be more of a virtual sensor, combining a vast array of technologies and disciplines, all employed to take a society’s pulse and assess its future health. It’s part of a broader Pentagon effort to master the societal and cultural elements of war — and effort that even many in the Defense Department believe is deeply flawed. First step: mine Twitter feeds for indications of upset.
✖ State Bill Outlaws Using Fetuses In Food Industry; Meets Visceral Reaction: “No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients.”
✖ Whom do we fear or trust? Faces instantly guide us, scientists say: Taking what they have learned over time — namely that, rightly or wrongly, people make instant judgments about faces that guide them in how they feel about that person — the scientists decided to search for a way to quantify and define exactly what it is about each person’s face that conveys a sense they can be trusted or feared. They chose those precise traits because they found they corresponded with a whole host of other vital characteristics, such as happiness and maturity. “Humans seem to be wired to look to faces to understand the person’s intentions,” said Todorov, who has spent years studying the subtleties of the simple plane containing the eyes, nose and mouth. “People are always asking themselves, ‘Does this person have good or bad intentions?’”
✖ If Pajamas Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Wear Pajamas: Michael Williams, a commissioner for Caddo Parish (which includes Shreveport), says he was horrified when he visited a local Walmart and espied a group of young miscreants “wearing pajama pants and house shoes.” He was extra-horrified when he glanced at one of the young men and noticed that “at the part where there should have been underwear” – you know the part – one of his parts in particular was allegedly “showing through the fabric.” Seems like existing law on indecent exposure should cover that, if it was really that bad, but Williams concluded further legislation was necessary. “Pajamas are designed to be worn in the bedroom at night,” said Williams, likely after extensive research on the history and design of pajamas. “If you can’t [wear them to the] courthouse, why are you going to do it in a restaurant or in public?” (Um, because those aren’t courthouses?) Williams also invoked the “slippery-slope” argument, of course. “Today it’s pajamas,” he said, “tomorrow it’s underwear.
✖ Tepco Drills a Hole in Fukushima Reactor … Finds that Nuclear Fuel Has Gone Missing: The New York Times pointed out last month: A former nuclear engineer with three decades of experience at a major engineering firm … who has worked at all three nuclear power complexes operated by Tokyo Electric [said] “If the fuel is still inside the reactor core, that’s one thing” …. But if the fuel has been dispersed more widely, then we are far from any stable shutdown.” Indeed, if the center of the reactors are in fact relatively “cold”, it may be because most of the hot radioactive fuel has leaked out of the containment vessels and escaped into areas where it can do damage to the environment. After drilling a hole in the containment vessel of Fukushima reactor 2, Tepco cannot find the fuel. As AP notes: The steam-blurred photos taken by remote control Thursday found none of the reactor’s melted fuel …. The photos also showed inner wall of the container heavily deteriorated after 10 months of exposure to high temperature and humidity, Matsumoto said.
✖ Kill Hollywood: Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise. That’s one reason we want to fund startups that will compete with movies and TV, but not the main reason. The main reason we want to fund such startups is not to protect the world from more SOPAs, but because SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying. They must be dying if they’re resorting to such tactics. If movies and TV were growing rapidly, that growth would take up all their attention. When a striker is fouled in the penalty area, he doesn’t stop as long as he still has control of the ball; it’s only when he’s beaten that he turns to appeal
✖ Military’s New Plan to Weed Out Counterfeits: Plant DNA: The U.S. military’s struggling to prevent counterfeit goods from infiltrating their supply chains. Now, they’re considering a novel approach to give legit wares a mark of distinction: embed them with strands of plant DNA. Working with a sub-contract from the Defense Logistics Agency, researchers at Applied DNA Sciences Inc. have figured out how to create unique DNA “signatures” out of plant genomes. A DNA-marked coating can then be applied to just about anything, from circuit boards to microchips to routers. Once embedded, the DNA can be detected in one of two ways: A handheld scanner that can instantly spot the DNA strand, or a forensic analysis that requires a swab of the mark. So as a product moves through the supply chain, it’d be checked for authenticity every step of the way.
✖ Man faces five years for ‘God does not exist’ Facebook post: 31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting “God does not exist” on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault. The posting was made on a Facebook Page titled Ateis Minang (Minang Atheist), which Aan created. At the time of writing, it had over 1,700 Likes. Aan’s posting has been removed, but supporters on the Page are urging police to release him.
✖ Shock Docs: Total Federalization of Police Under New Homeland Security Mission: In short, it confirms the intentions of key insiders– including former NSA/CIA head Michael Hayden, former Rep. Jane Harmon, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, 9/11 Commissioners Philip Zelikow and Richard Ben-Viniste, former National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and others– to flesh out a plan we have already seen developing from an outside perspective– namely, to build a domestic Stasi-like force to takeover, monitor and control the population. Moreover, the media has reported on this changed mission– towards the full spectrum domination of the people under a patently-fascist framework– with the same calm as the weekly weather forecast.
✖ Supreme Court Court Rejects Willy-Nilly GPS Tracking: The Supreme Court said Monday that law enforcement authorities might need a probable-cause warrant from a judge to affix a GPS device to a vehicle and monitor its every move — but the justices did not say that a warrant was needed in all cases. The convoluted decision (.pdf) in what is arguably the biggest Fourth Amendment case in the computer age, rejected the Obama administration’s position that attaching a GPS device to a vehicle was not a search. The government had told the high court that it could even affix GPS devices on the vehicles of all members of the Supreme Court, without a warrant. “We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the five-justice majority. The majority declined to say whether that search was unreasonable and required a warrant.
✖ Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops: Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court. Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.
✖ Russian scientist claims signs of life spotted on Venus: Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during a 1982 during a mission to explore the heavily acid-clouded planet. Venus is roughly the same size as Earth, but it has a thick atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide. With an atmospheric pressure 92 times Earth’s, a waterless and volcano-riddled surface and a surface temperature of 894 degrees, the planet has never been considered a serious target of research into the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But in his article, published in the magazine Solar System Research, Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a “disk,” a “black flap” and a “scorpion.”
✖ Psychics Say Apollo 16 Astronauts Found Alien Ship: They say that a psychic technique called remote viewing allows people to take an armchair visit to other planets. The mind-travelers draw images of alien-looking things that are supposedly transmitted from a definitely out-of-body experience (potentially) millions of miles from Earth. In the 1960s, when psychoactive drugs became widely popular, I assumed that claims of tripping to other worlds were purely imaginary. Consider this remote viewing experience reported in a discussion forum: “…i relaxed in my chair, and pointed myself up there. I saw 6 or seven aliens looking right at me grinning and smiling. they had red eyes like the reddit alien but no antenna. As soon as I saw these creatures i immediately felt hurt ..
✖ Texas UAV Enthusiast Uses Pilotless Aircraft to Uncover River Contamination: A tip from an anonymous amateur unmanned-aerial-vehicle pilot is what led Texas authorities to open a major criminal investigation into the waste practices of a Dallas meat packing plant. The Environmental Protection Agency, The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), and Texas Parks and Wildlife are investigating whether a Dallas meat packing plant was sending its wastewater to a local river after images from an amateur UAV pilot showed a river behind the plant “full of blood.” The Columbia Meat packing plant sits along a creek that runs into the Trinity River.
✖ Filesonic Kills File-Sharing Service After MegaUpload Arrests: Filesonic, one of the Internet’s leading cyberlocker services, has taken some drastic measures following the Megaupload shutdown and arrests last week. In addition to discontinuing its affiliates rewards program and not yet paying accrued money to members, the site has disabled all sharing functionality, leaving users only with access to their own files.
✖ Arkansas campaign manager’s cat found dead with the word “liberal” scrawled on its side: An Arkansas campaign manager says he came home Sunday and found his family’s cat fatally bludgeoned on his front steps – with the word “liberal” scrawled across its side. According to a statement from Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden’s campaign, Jacob Burris’ cat had been hit so violently that one of its eyeballs “was barely hanging from its socket.” The incident shook Burris, who expressed concerns about the safety of his children. “I knew what we were getting into running in this district, but when you have four children, it makes you feel vulnerable,” he told the Daily News. “It’s a very red district… you see billboards all over the place with Democratic senators’ names and the hammer and sickle on some of them, calling them socialists.”
✖ Polish leader tries to smoke pot in Parliament: The leader of a new left-wing party in Poland threatened to light up a joint in Parliament on Friday — but just burned incense instead. Janusz Palikot is campaigning to get soft drugs legalized and to otherwise liberalize the conservative country. “We’re trying to get into room 143 to burn some grass, in accordance with our announcement,” Palikot told reporters in a news conference held in his Parliament office.

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Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 25, 2012

Tags: 9/11, Aborted, aircraft, Alien, Aliens, Allegedly, Amendment, anonymous, atmosphere, Bacteria, bad, Bathroom, Bats, Beaten, Bedroom, brain, Burn, Bush, Can, Case, cat, Chinese, college, computer, consumption, Control, Controversial, Counterfeit, court, cover, Creatures, Criminal, damage, David, Dead, Defense Department, design, DNA, Dog, Domestic, domination, Drug, Drugs, Eat, Economy, enforcement, Experience, Extraterrestrial, Face, Facebook, FEAR, flesh, Florida, Food, force, Forced, Found, Fukushima, Future, George W. Bush, Government, GPS, Hallucinogenic, Hammer, Hanging, High, History, Hollywood, Home, homeland security, Hot, Human, Imperial, incense, indecent exposure, Industry, investigation, Joint, judge, Justice, Look, Magic, majority, Man, manager, Meat, Mexican, Miami, mob, Modern, Monday, money, Movies, Mushroom, Mushrooms, National security, Navy, New York, New York Times, News, Nobody, Nose, NOT, Nuclear, Nuclear power, Obama, odor, Old, Outlaws, parliament, Party, Peaceful, penalty, Pentagon, person, Photographs, Photos, plane, Planet, Poland, Police, Polish, Pot, Power, Prison, product, Professor, Protection, psilocybin, Psychic, quality, Radar, Reactor, reason, Remote, remote control, Research, Revealed, River, safety, Science, scientist, Search, Secret, Secretary, Security, Service, Shock, Sick, site, smell, smoke, Social, Some, space, Supreme, Supreme Court, sweat, System, Target, technique, TEPCO, Texas, Threatened, time, Toilet, Tokyo, trial, TV, Twitter, U.S., UK, Video, Virtual, War, warrant, waste, Weed, Wildlife, Wired, Woman, World, Young

Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction (1983) Dennis Weaver Cokehead TV Movie

A real estate salesman with career and marriage problems gets hooked on cocaine, and finds that not only does it not help him cope with them, but it makes them much, much worse.

File under Cult Movies, Drugsploitation, SeMeN SPeRmS Approved, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS ViDeO CLuB, Trash TV

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 16, 2012

Tags: Cocaine, coke, drug abuse, Drug Addict, Drug Addiction, Drugsploitation, Fiend, Hooked, Made For TV Movie, movie, NOT, Propaganda, say no to drugs, Seduction, SeMeNSPeRmS, Substance abuse, TV, Video

Everyday Skank

▲ Ferret Legging – A Truly Unusual Sport: Also known as ferret-down-trousers and put ‘em down, the rules of the sport are pretty tight. Competitors have two ferrets placed inside their trousers, which are tied firmly at the ankles and belted up at the waist, thereby eliminating any point of escape for the furry creatures. The competitor then stands before judges, enduring the misery of the razor-sharp claws and teeth of the ferrets. Other rules state that competitors cannot be drunk and the ferrets must not be sedated. Also, the ferrets must have a full set of teeth that have not been blunted or filed. The man who stands the longest, wins. Sounds gruesome, doesn’t it? Well, get this – they aren’t even allowed to put on underwear, so as to allow free access to the ferrets from one leg to the other.
▲ Shoplifting Around the World [Infographic]
▲ Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact: According to McGill, if a mouse is submerged in Mountain Dew between four and seven days, the rodent “will have no calcium in its bones and bony structures.” During those days of soft drink immersion, “the mouse’s abdominal structure will rupture.” Additionally, “its cranial cavity (head) is also likely to rupture within that time period,” McGill noted. After 30 days exposure to Mountain Dew, “all of the mouse’s structures” would have disintegrated to the point that it would not be recognizable. In fact, “the mouse will have been transformed into a ‘jelly-like’ substance.” The only part of the rodent that could possibly survive, added McGill, was “a portion of the tail.”
▲ Lab-grown glands, eyes and brain parts: Growing a complete, functioning brain is unfeasible, but there is real potential in growing functional neural tissue containing specific types of cells, for transplantation into the human brain. This is one avenue of research that the team are investigating. Last year, they showed that ES cells can be coaxed to differentiate into functional cerebellar Purkinje cells, which integrate themselves into the brain when transplanted into mouse foetuses. “We are now attempting to generate Purkinje cells from human ES and induced pluripotent stem cells,” says Sasai. This would be useful in establishing animal models for the spino-cerebellar ataxias, to investigate their pathogenesis and to explore the possibility of gene therapy for these diseases.” The 3D culture technique could also be used to grow midbrain tissue containing neurons that synthesize the neurotransmitter dopamine, which could eventually prove to be very useful in the development of therapies for Parkinson’s Disease.
▲ No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push: The Pentagon hasn’t come close to solving the PTSD crisis plaguing the current generation of troops. But a cutting-edge realm of treatment might change that — by wiping away the fear that military personnel associate with traumatic memories. The Pentagon this week announced an $11 million grant for three research institutions, all of them long-time hubs for the military’s ongoing PTSD investigations. Experts at Emory University, the University of Southern California and New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center will study the effectiveness of D-Cycloserine (DCS). DCS is a pharmaceutical thought to help extinguish fearful memories. It’s usually taken right before exposure therapy, a process that involves recalling traumatic experiences in an effort to nullify the menacing associations that accompany them.
▲ Saudi son sale: $20 million price tag for a child: A failed Saudi businessman has put up his own son up for sale on Facebook. He claims that with all doors closed to him, he couldn’t see any other way to provide for his wife and daughter. Saud bin Nasser Al Shahry wants more than 73 million UAE Dirhams for the boy, a sum equivalent to almost $20 million, reports Qatar’s Al Sharq newspaper. A deal on the boy would offer “a decent life to his mother and sister rather than living in poverty.” The resourceful businessman said his debt-collecting firm had been ruled illegal by a local court and had to be shut down. When Al Shahry approached the Labor Office for financial assistance, the authorities allegedly refused him aid as the ministry does not provide help to individuals over 35 years old.
▲ 7 year old Poppy Burge gets liposuction voucher from ‘Human Barbie’ mum Sarah for Christmas: A seven-year-old who received a voucher for a boob job on her last birthday has received yet another inappropriate gift from her surgery-obsessed mother: A £7,000 voucher for liposuction. Little Poppy Burge received the gift in her Christmas stocking after her mother, a 51-year-old plastic surgery addict known as The Human Barbie, decided it would ‘come in handy’. ‘I put the voucher in her stocking – there’s nothing wrong with that,’ she said. ‘She asks for surgery all the time. She wants to look good and lipo is one of those procedures that will always come in handy.
▲ Police Shoot and Kill Armed 8th Grader in Texas: Police shot and killed an eighth grader brandishing a handgun in a Texas middle school hallway Wednesday. Police received a call around 8 a.m. saying there was someone with a weapon at Cummings High School in Brownsville, Texas, the Associated Press reported. Officers found the student with a handgun in a hallway and shot him after he “engaged” police, a district spokeswoman said in a statement. He was taken to a nearby medical center where he later died, the Brownsville Herald reported. His name has not been released. Local ABC affiliate KXXV-TV reported that police told the student to put his weapon down and fired three times after he refused to comply.
▲ Stephen Hawking admits he finds women ‘a complete mystery’: His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world’s most famous scientist. In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. “They are,” he said “a complete mystery.”
▲ Avoiding Facial Recognition of the Future: The main focus of the camouflage is to use makeup and hair to create a look that is a mix between organic and machine. This makes it very hard to program software that can detect facial features if the traditional lines of a person’s visage are broken up in non-organic fashion. For those wanting to take a stab at protecting their identity, there are a few basic tips offered: 1. Avoid enhancers: They amplify key facial features. 2. Partially obscure the nose-bridge: The region where the nose, eyes, and forehead intersect is a key facial feature. 3. Partially obscure the ocular region: The position and darkness of eyes is a key facial feature. 4. Remain inconspicuous: For camouflage to function, it must not be perceived as a mask or disguise.
▲ PayPal Tells Buyer To Destroy Purchased Violin Instead Of Return For Refund: a seller claims that she’s out $2,500 and an antique violin after the company told the buyer to destroy the instrument. According to the seller, who shared her tale with the aforementioned Regretsy, she had sold the old violin to a buyer in Canada, who subsequently disputed the instrument’s bona fides. It is certainly not uncommon for people in the antique musical instrument field to argue over whether or not a particular item is the real deal, and it makes sense to notify PayPal that you are disputing the purchase. But the decision as to whether or not the violin is the real deal or an impersonator is not usually left up to the company that promises the payment. Alas, someone at PayPal apparently is an expert in old violins, because the company determined the instrument was “counterfeit” and told the buyer he needed to destroy it in order to get his refund. The buyer not only smashed the violin to bits; he also snapped some pics that he sent to the seller.
▲ La Redoute Naked Man Kids PHOTO: Stylist UK reports that the image has stirred up its fair share of controversy in France — and with good reason. The photo, found on La Redoute’s e-commerce site, features four annoyingly happy looking children frolicking on the beach wearing fun (if grammatically incorrect) T-shirts. But way off in the distance behind them is a man wearing absolutely nothing. This is creepy on a number of levels — in the photo, this naked man’s presence invalidates all that childlike joy the children are experiencing. But then you have to step back a level. How did this man get here in the first place? Did La Redoute really do a children’s photoshooot on a beach where people are allowed to roam around naked? Odds are, if there was one naked guy on that beach, there were probably more.
▲ Chinese Girls Before and After Makeup: Before and after makeup comparisons, even more shocking than plastic surgery
▲ Deadly parasite turns Bay Area honeybees into zombie slaves: Infected bees go mad, abandoning their hive in a suicidal rush toward bright lights, according to a new study by San Francisco State researchers. “It’s the flight of the living dead,” said lead investigator and biology professor John Hafernik, also president of the California Academy of Sciences. The parasite, a tiny fly, has been found in bees from three-quarters of the 31 surveyed hives in the Bay Area — essentially, everywhere except Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In a plotline similar to a George Romero horror film, the fly deposits its eggs into the bee’s abdomen, then takes over. The hapless bees walk around in circles, with no apparent sense of direction. Some are unable to even stand on their legs. “They kept stretching them out and then falling over,” Hafernik said. “It really painted a picture of something like a zombie.”
▲ India girl killed in ritual sacrifice to ensure better harvest: Police arrested two men, both poor farmers, last week and they told police they killed the girl to appease their gods and get a better harvest, Das said. Tati was walking home after watching television at a neighbor’s house when she was kidnapped, Das said. The two men confessed to cutting her open and removing her liver as an offering. Das said the police had gathered enough evidence, apart from the confessions, to charge the two with murder. They would face life in prison or even the death sentence if convicted. The men were described as “tribals,” a term referring to the region’s indigenous people, most of whom remain mired in poverty and illiteracy.
▲ ‘Lost World’ Of Sea Creatures Discovered Near Antarctica: A “lost world” of sea creatures was discovered near Antarctica, British scientists announced Wednesday. Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic said it was unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents — a world populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs. It was “almost like a sight from another planet,” said expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University. Even in the eye-popping world of deep-sea vents, the Antarctic discoveries stand out, with the unfamiliar species of crabs found crowded in piles around the warm waters emanating from the seafloor. Many of the animals found at the vents have never been found at hydrothermal vents in other oceans, Rogers said. “To see these animals in such huge densities was just amazing,” Rogers told LiveScience.
▲ Naked man interrupts ‘Chipmunks’ at North Riverside Mall theater: Kids and parents who paid admission to see a movie about three shipwrecked chipmunks on Dec. 29 at the North Riverside Park Mall’s Classic Cinemas theater, 7501 Cermak Rd., got a bonus show that afternoon – one that landed a 34-year-old Chicago man in Cook County Jail. About a half hour into the 4 p.m. showing of the kiddie feature Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, police say an entirely naked Edward L. Brown stood up from his seat in the front row, faced the crowd of 86 theater-goers, stretched out his hands and displayed his genitalia for all to see before sitting back down to enjoy the movie. …According to the police report, Brown told officers that he had been let inside the movie theater for free by an unknown female who allegedly told him to have a seat in the front row of the theater, take off his clothes and wait for her, so they could have sex, smoke crack and do heroin.
▲ Charlton Library Sends Police To Collect Overdue Books From 5-Year-Old: A Charlton mom says her local library crossed the line when they sent police to collect her daughter’s overdue library books. Her mom says the 5-year-old girl was so afraid that she burst into tears. Charlton Police Sergeant Dan Dowd stopped by the home of Shannon Benoit to let her know that her daughter had two books several months overdue which needed to be returned or paid for.
▲ Bonobo ape lights campfire, cooks hamburgers: Kanzi, a 31-year-old Bonobos, also known as the pygmy chimpanzee, reportedly became obsessed with the film “Quest for Fire” at an early age. “Kanzi makes fire because he wants to,” Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, his main handler at the Great Ape Trust, told the Telegraph. “The movie was released about a year after Kanzi was born and was about early man struggling to control fire. Kanzi watched this spellbound over and over hundreds of times.”
▲ Children becoming ‘addicted’ to computers: Children’s access to smartphones and computers should be limited to stop them becoming “addicted” to electronic gadgets, according to a schools’ leader.
▲ Password case reframes Fifth Amendment rights in context of digital world: Beyond the log-in screen of Ramona Fricosu’s laptop computer lies what federal prosecutors say could be the key evidence in the bank-fraud case against her. There’s only one problem: Prosecutors don’t know her password. Thus, in an extraordinarily rare move, prosecutors in Denver are seeking a court order forcing Fricosu to unlock the computer so that they can obtain files they would use to try to convict her and her ex-husband. Civil-liberties groups nationwide have taken notice, saying the case tests the strength of rights against self-incrimination in a digital world. Prosecutors, meanwhile, say that allowing criminal defendants to beat search warrants simply by encrypting their computers would make it impossible to obtain evidence in an age when clues are more likely held within a hard drive than a file cabinet.
▲ White powder sent to Fla. gov’t office sickens 4: According to the Palm Beach Post, initial testing of the white powder was “inconclusive.” WPEC mentioned that there can be psychological and physical effects or psychosomatic symptoms even if the substance is not hazardous due to the panic caused by the situation, but Emergency Manager for the City of West Palm Beach Allan Ortman told the Palm Beach Post that when tested the powder didn’t change colors, which is raising some concern. The powder has been sent to a FBI lab for further testing, and results are expected within 24 hours.
▲ Police State 2012: No Need to Wait, It’s Already Here: One of the greatest problems in talking about the police state is that all such discussion of the subject is hampered by the lack of a clear-cut definition. Given the public’s own ignorance of the true nature and function of a police state, story after story after story of intolerable levels of official oppression, secret illegal surveillance, and increasingly sophisticated technology for tracking, apprehending, incapacitating and even killing dissenters can be dismissed because these stories are reported one at a time, in a contextless and therefore meaningless way that invites the interpretation that these stories are only warnings of what is to come instead of sign posts of a reality that is already here.
▲ John Lydon’s top of the pops roots Reggae picks: Don Letts: The Rastas loved John! To them he was “THE punk rock Don from London” they were aware of all the trouble he had stirred up in London, and yeah, they were into what he stood for and his stance, and they dug it… We smoked a chalice together with U Roy for breakfast, and then went out to one of his dances, miles out in the countryside, quite a long journey by car. I remember the dreads stringing up this sound, and kicking off with some earthquake dubs. Now let me tell you this sound system was LOUD, and me and John both of us, literally passed out! I remember hours later some dreads shaking us awake, it was like, “Wake up man, dance done, dance finish now man!” Yeah, it was pretty wild for me and John out in Jamaica. We loved it. John just had a vibe you know, people were drawn to him. It was the same in London; it was the same in Kingston. John is Irish, and there is a definite affinity between Jamaicans and Irish!
▲ Pot Culture: White Punks on Dope: In fact, despite protestations to the contrary, the punks always smoked pot when no one was looking. In John Lydon’s autobiography, Don Letts explains how he became DJ at the seminal punk hang out, The Roxy: “I took the job at first for the money. I thought the punks were just a bunch of crazy white people. I didn’t really tune into it. When I became the deejay and started meeting them, I picked up on what they were doing. I got the job first, and then got all my black mates to work there. Everybody who worked there, besides Andy (Czezowski), was black. We used to make joints before we went to work to sell to the punks over the counter. The people would come up and say, ‘Give me two beers and a spliff. No, make that two spliffs and a beer.’ They couldn’t roll Jamaican cones.”