USA

News Is Bad For You

. . Wealthy Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides to bypass lines at Disney World

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.” The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

‘Baby factory’ uncovered in Nigeria

Nigerian police say they have rescued six pregnant girls from child traffickers who were planning to sell their babies. Two men and a woman have been arrested in the case, which is the second so-called baby factory to be uncovered in a week. Last week, at least 23 girls and four babies were found in Umuaka, in eastern Nigeria’s Imo State.

. . Sophia Stewart, The Real Creator of ‘The Matrix,’ Wins Lawsuit

This little known story has met a just conclusion, as Sophia Stewart, African American author of The Matrix will finally receive her just due from the copyright infringement of her original work!!! A six-year dispute has ended involving Sophia Stewart, the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner Brothers. Stewart’s allegations, involving copyright infringement and racketeering, were received and acknowledged by the Central District of California, Judge Margaret Morrow presiding. Stewart, a New Yorker who has resided in Salt Lake City for the past five years, will recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. She will soon receive one of the biggest payoffs in the history of Hollywood , as the gross receipts of both films and their sequels total over 2.5 billion dollars.

. . How Verizon and Other Wireless Carriers Are Mining Customer Data

Wireless operators have access to an unprecedented volume of information about users’ real-world activities, but for years these massive data troves were put to little use other than for internal planning and marketing. This data is under lock and key no more. Under pressure to seek new revenue streams (see “AT&T Looks to Outside Developers for Innovation”), a growing number of mobile carriers are now carefully mining, packaging, and repurposing their subscriber data to create powerful statistics about how people are moving about in the real world.

. . James McCormick, British Man Who Sold Fake Bomb Detectors, Sentenced To 10 Years For Fraud

A British judge on Thursday sentenced a businessman who sold fake bomb detectors to 10 years in jail, saying the millionaire had shown a cavalier disregard for potentially fatal consequences. James McCormick made an estimated 50 million pounds ($77.8 million) from the sales of his non-working detectors – which were based on a novelty golf ball finder – to countries including Iraq, Belgium, Niger and Saudi Arabia. McCormick, 57, was convicted of three counts of fraud last month and sentenced Thursday at the Old Bailey court in London, where Judge Richard Hone called his profits from a “callous confidence trick” obscene and outrageous.

. . United Nations Twitter Account Follows Porn Star

The official United Nations Twitter account has 1,462,609 followers (or it did at the time this article was published) and only follows 537 accounts - a pretty exclusive club to say the least. For the most part, the 537 accounts @UN follows include world governments, dozens of UN special missions and international heads of states. Buried within that list, however, ConstitutionSchool.com was shocked to discover one account which seemed oddly out of place: “Penelope Black Diamond,” a German porn star whose Twitter username is @BigBustyStar.

. . Early feast clue to smell of ancient Earth

‘So, rather surprisingly, we can say that life on earth 1,900 million years ago would have smelled a lot like rotten eggs.’

. . Do You Want the Government Buying Your Data From Corporations?

It’s no secret that we’re monitored continuously on the Internet. Some of the company names you know, such as Google and Facebook. Others hide in the background as you move about the Internet. There are browser plugins that show you who is tracking you. One Atlantic editor found 105 companies tracking him during one 36-hour period. Add data from your cell phone (who you talk to, your location), your credit cards (what you buy, from whom you buy it), and the dozens of other times you interact with a computer daily, we live in a surveillance state beyond the dreams of Orwell. It’s all corporate data, compiled and correlated, bought and sold. And increasingly, the government is doing the buying. Some of this is collected using National Security Letters (NSLs). These give the government the ability to demand an enormous amount of personal data about people for very speculative reasons, with neither probable cause nor judicial oversight. Data on these secretive orders is obviously scant,

. . Facebook causes ‘psychotic episodes and delusions’, claims study

Dr Nitzan said: ‘All of the patients developed psychotic symptoms related to the situation, including delusions regarding the person behind the screen and their connection through the computer. ‘Two patients began to feel vulnerable as a result of sharing private information, and one even experienced tactile hallucinations, believing that the person beyond the screen was physically touching her. ‘Some of the problematic features of the internet relate to issues of geographical and spatial distortion, the absence of non-verbal cues, and the tendency to idealise the person with whom someone is communicating, becoming intimate without ever meeting face-to-face.’ He added that mental health professionals should not overlook the internet’s influence when speaking to patients. ‘When you ask somebody about their social life, it’s very sensible to ask about Facebook and social networking habits, as well as internet use.

. . Human rights record of the United States in 2012

The State Department of the United States recently released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, posing as “the world judge of human rights” again. As in previous years, the reports are full of carping and irresponsible remarks on the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China. However, the U.S. turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and never said a word about it. Facts show that there are serious human rights problems in the U.S. which incur extensive criticism in the world. The Human Rights Record of the U.S. in 2012 is hereby prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the U.S. to people across the world by simply laying down some facts.

. . Your Body Is a Corporate Test Tube

A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can’t escape it in our cars. It’s in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name — and no antidote. The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.

. . UNCOVERED: The Haunting ‘Human Zoo’ of Paris

In 1907, six different villages were built in the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale, representing all the corners of the French colonial empire at the time– Madagascar, Indochine, Sudan, Congo, Tunisia and Morocco. The villages and their pavillions were built to recreate the life and culture as it was in their original habitats. This included mimicking the architecture, importing the agriculture and appallingly, inhabiting the replica houses with people, brought to Paris from the faraway territories.

. . Guantanamo camp burns through $900,000 a year per inmate

It’s been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth and President Barack Obama cited the cost this week as one of many reasons to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which burns through some $900,000 per prisoner annually. The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner. By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.

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Barbara Kruger Responds to Supreme’s Lawsuit: ‘A Ridiculous Clusterf**k of Totally Uncool Jokers’

And in the response to Supreme, he argued that McSweeney had been putting out Supreme Bitch shirts since 2004, when she was 22. Nine years later, Jebbia and Supreme have attempted to sue her for millions of dollars, arguing copyright infringement against the brand. A brand that, by the way, has definitely incorporated other people and other companies’ design elements itself. One of those people? American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, whose work explicitly inspired not just Supreme’s ubiquitous red-and-white logo (see above), but so many other brands like it, and legions of other fairly famous artists as well. But in the past, Kruger—who now teaches at UCLA—has been pretty quiet on the connections, deferring questions about the commercial entrepreneurs who’ve culled from and profited off of the template she inarguably set. But we thought we’d give it a shot, and Complex reached out to Kruger anyway, asking her what she made of the lawsuit, as well as both McSweeney and Jebbia’s p

. . Berlin First Graders Get Explicit Sex Education Book

When it comes to sex, Germans are not known for being squeamish. Yet a sex-education book that has been circulating in Berlin elementary schools has some parents up in arms. The book, “Where Do You Come From?” (“Wo kommst du her?”), which is recommended for ages 5 and up, shows a couple, Lisa and Lars, in various stages of arousal. In one illustration, Lisa puts a condom on Lars’ erect penis. Another shows them having intercourse. The text also veers toward the explicit. “When it’s so good that it can’t get any better, Lisa and Lars have an orgasm,” it reads. And, finally: “The vagina and penis feel nice and tingly and warm.”

. . The sex manual for ultra-Orthodox Jews

“We wanted to give people a sense of not only where to put their sexual organs, but where to put their arms and legs,” Ribner says. “If you have never seen a movie, never read a book, how are you supposed to know what you do?”

. . Which Drugs Actually Kill Americans [Infographic]

By adding all those sub-categories up, imperfect as they may be, it’s clear that the rate of reported overdoses the U.S. more than doubled between 1999 and 2010. About half of those additional deaths are in the pharmaceuticals category, which the CDC has written about before. Nearly three-quarters of the pharmaceuticals deaths are opioid analgesics—prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. And while cocaine, heroin and alcohol are all responsible for enough deaths to warrant their own stripes on the chart, many popular illegal drugs—including marijuana and LSD—are such a tiny blip as to be invisible.

. . Baby girl sacrificed on bonfire after sect leader says tot is the Antichrist, Chile cops say

“The baby was naked. They strapped tape around her mouth to keep her from screaming. Then they placed her on a board. After calling on the spirits they threw her on the bonfire alive,” said Miguel Ampuero, of the Police investigative Unit, Chile’s equivalent of the FBI. Authorities said the 12-member sect was formed in 2005 and was led by Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, 36, who remains at large. “Everyone in this sect was a professional,” Ampuero said. “We have someone who was a veterinarian and who worked as a flight attendant, we have a filmmaker, a draftsman. Everyone has a university degree. ” Police said Castillo Gaete, the ringleader, was last seen traveling to Peru to buy ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew plant that he used to control the members of the rite.

. . A Lesson On Guns – A Public Service Announcement On Guns And Bullets

SO, the bottom line is this: If you are in a place where you hear steady, and sustained, and nearby (lets call that, for some technical reasons, anything less than 800 meters) gunfire, do these things: Go to your basement. You are cool there. If you don’t have a basement, go to the other side of the house from the firing, and leave, heading away from the firing. Do not stop for a mile. If you do not think that you can leave, get on the ground floor, as far from the firing as possible, and place something solid between you and the firing. Solid is something like a bathtub, a car (engine block), a couple of concrete walls (single layer brick…nope). If you are high up (say 4rd story or higher) just get away from the side of the building where the firing is taking place. You will, mostly, be protected by the thick concrete of the structure. 8. But for cripes sake, do not step out on to your front porch and start recording a video on your iPhone, unless you actually have a death-wish

. . Texas Fertilizer Plant Disaster: Little Coverage, Much of It Wrong

“Terrorists want media attention, so we give it to them. Unsafe industries don’t want media attention–so we give that to them.” And that’s exactly what’s going on today, in the coverage of the two disasters last week.

. . 2 pound joint taken by cops ucsc 420

5000 people at 4-20 for UCSC. This guy had a booth set up to unveil this guy, shouldn’t have drawn so much attention man!

. . 1 Inmate Impregnated 4 Guards At Md. Jail, Prosecutors Say

“the ringleader of it all, according to the indictment, is Tavon White, a four-year inmate charged with attempted murder. He reportedly made $16,000 in one month off the smuggled contraband. Four corrections officers–Jennifer Owens, Katera Stevenson, Chania Brooks and Tiffany Linder, who are also facing charges — allegedly became impregnated by White since he’s been in jail. Charging documents reveal Owens had ‘Tavon’ tattooed on her neck and Stevenson had ‘Tavon’ tattooed on her wrist.”

. . The Source Family Documentary

. . Dating Freedom Lovers Photos by Planetlnfowars

All Planet Infowars Users that are participating in the Dating Freedom Lovers Mission.

. . Saudi Arabia expelled three Emirati men for being too handsome

In its report, Elaph said several religious cops deployed through the festival rushed into the UAE pavilion on Sunday and escorted three Emirati delegates out. “A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission members feared female visitors could fall for them,” the news service said, adding that the festival’s management took urgent measures to deport the three to Abu Dhabi.

. . “American Dream”: Food loaded into Dumpsters while Hundreds of Hungry Americans Restrained by Police

Hundreds of poor people waiting outside of a closed grocery store for the possibility of getting the remaining food is not the picture of the “American Dream.” Yet on March 23, outside the Laney Walker Supermarket in Augusta, Ga., that is exactly what happened. Residents filled the parking lot with bags and baskets hoping to get some of the baby food, canned goods, noodles and other non-perishables. But a local church never came to pick up the food, as the store owner prior to the eviction said they had arranged. By the time the people showed up for the food, what was left inside the premises—as with any eviction—came into the ownership of the property holder, SunTrust Bank. The bank ordered the food to be loaded into dumpsters and hauled to a landfill instead of distributed. The people that gathered had to be restrained by police as they saw perfectly good food destroyed. Local Sheriff Richard Roundtree told the news “a potential for a riot was extremely high.”

. . 10 Biggest Unsolved U.S. Terrorism Cases

1 Wall Street Bombing (September 16,1920) – New York, New York 38 dead, 143 wounded The detonation of a horse-drawn wagon loaded with 45kg of dynamite and more than 200kg of scrap iron in front of the J.P. Morgan offices in New York remains the deadliest unsolved terrorist incident in U.S. history. Federal agents investigated, and dismissed, the possibility of involvement by Soviet saboteurs, the Communist Party USA and the Industrial Workers of the World. Historians believe the bombing may have been engineered by Italian anarchists.

. . Self-medication in animals much more widespread than believed

It’s been known for decades that animals such as chimpanzees seek out medicinal herbs to treat their diseases. But in recent years, the list of animal pharmacists has grown much longer, and it now appears that the practice of animal self-medication is a lot more widespread than previously thought, according to a University of Michigan ecologist and his colleagues.

. . Civet poop coffee may be threatening wild species

“Originally, the dung-covered beans were collected in coffee plantations but more recently, as more people wanted to drink coffee made from beans that had passed through the intestines of this small carnivore, entrepreneurs have begun sticking civets in cages, feeding them coffee beans and recollecting them from the dung for wholesale,” the paper’s author, Chris Shepherd the deputy regional director with anti-wildlife crime NGO TRAFFIC, told mongabay.com. “Reportedly, as demand rose, other civet species were captured and added to these captive civet coffee makers.”

. . National Disgrace

Police almost never talk about or claim credit for making the arrests. Police make so many because they are easy arrests and because significant constituencies within police departments benefit from the arrests. Police work can be dangerous. Ordinary patrol and narcotics police like the marijuana arrests because they are relatively safe and easy. If an officer stops and searches 10 or 15 young people, one or two of them will likely have a bit of marijuana. All police have arrest quotas and often they can earn much-desired overtime pay by making a marijuana arrest toward the end of a shift. In New York City, arresting people for petty offenses for overtime pay is called “collars for dollars.” Every cop in the city knows that expression. From the officers’ point of view, people possessing marijuana are highly desirable arrestees. As one veteran lieutenant said, people whose only crime is marijuana possession are “clean,” meaning physically clean. Unlike junkies or winos

. . News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

. . Should The Creepy Times Square Costumed Characters Be Regulated?

“Super Mario groped the woman,” says Times Square Alliance president Tim Tompkins. “Elmo was ranting anti-Semitic things. Spider-Man punched a woman in the face. Now a kid was attacked by Cookie Monster. And those are just ones where there’s been an arrest! We’ve anecdotally heard there’s a lot more that’s been happening. One of my staff members said an Elmo patted her backside when she was walking through Times Square on a crowded day.” Tompkins also pointed us to a photo of a man dressed as Toy Story’s Woody urinating in a doorway

. . Does my bum look big on this? Barbie earns cash balancing things on ‘bum shelf’

BOOTY-OBSESSED Barbie Edwards has spent a fortune on food to get such a huge backside — but now her big butt is making big bucks. The 42-year-old mum claims she has the world’s largest bottom, and says she has used her unique asset to make a whopping £18,000 in the past six months just by BALANCING things on her behind. The colossal rear measures creating a “butt shelf” upon which Barbie can balance trays of food and drink — to the delight of her paying fans. The bouncy blonde is delighted with her shape and is now hoping to persuade Guinness World Records to include a new category for world’s biggest shelf behind. She said: “I used to hate my big hips and bum, but since I’ve been modelling it’s changed the way I feel about myself. My bum shelf has a career all of its own and I wouldn’t change it.”

. . Pres Obama Signs Bill Killing Anti-Corruption, Pro-Transparency STOCK Act Provisions

So the very bill that Obama last year claimed was “a good first step” and suggested that “we should do even more in the months ahead”, has now been totally revised and stripped of the most important aspects which promote transparency in the new bill that he has just signed yesterday. Instead of doing more to increase transparency, Congress and President Obama have rolled back the very provisions of the bill which helped promote an open government, in a decidedly non-transparent manner (unanimous voice consent, closed-signing by the president).

. . Police Chief Recovering After Eating Cake Laced With Pot

The Hocking County Sheriff’s office is trying to get to the bottom of who is responsible for drugging Laurelville Police Chief Mike Berkemeier. Berkemeier says the problem began Easter Sunday when he ate some cake sitting on his kitchen counter. ”I got up in the morning and ate it — the entire thing,” he said. Shortly after eating that cake, Berkemeier says he began to feel sick like never before. ”I thought I was dying,” he said. Berkemeier says all he could think to do was make the short drive from his home to the Laurelville police station for help. ”I don’t remember much of the drive here, even though it’s just a few blocks and was met by a couple of the medics from the fire department,” he said. Berkemeier tells 10TV medics transported him to Berger Hospital in Circleville where doctors performed tests to see what was wrong with him. ”I kept trying to explain to them this wasn’t getting any better. It just got worse,” he said. “I felt like I was out of my mind.”

. . Hijacking airplanes with an Android phone

It’s amazing to discover that aviation – an industry where safety is of vital importance and every physical element has one or even two fail-safe mechanisms – is failing to secure the onboard computer, the heart and brain of the plane.

. . To Catch Government Workers With Ties to Child Porn, Call the IRS

There is a national crisis of federal employees engaged in the child porn industry and a related epidemic at the state level. I’ve documented two states, Vermont and Maine, that appear to be running state protected child trafficking rings with evidence of cops, judges, lawyers, clergy and government employees covering for each other. This kind of racketeering creates powerful, and extremely profitable, pedophile rings. Money drives the crime. It is estimated that a criminal willing to molest a child in front of a live webcam can earn $1,000 a night. In Kittery Maine, at the “Danish Health Club,” one bust yielded $6.1 million in “door fees” over a five year period with “prostitutes” earning $12 million. Pimps’ earnings were not reported. The “door man” was a retired police officer whose wife worked in back. This bust happened because of one hard-working IRS agent, Rod Giguere.

. . The Same Compounds Behind Marijuana’s Distinctive Stinky Smells Give Clues About the Kinds of High You’ll Experience

So if THC levels are generally high across the board and the other cannabinoids are present only at trace levels, what makes one strain different from another? And why does each marijuana strain impart a distinct psychoactive effect? There must be something else in the plant that influences the quality of the cannabis high. David Watson, the master crafter of the foundational hybrid Skunk #1, was among the first to emphasize the importance of aromatic terpenes for their modifying impact on THC. Terpenes, or terpenoids, are the compounds in cannabis that give the plant its unique smell. THC and the other cannabinoids have no odor, so marijuana’s compelling fragrance depends on which terpenes predominate. It’s the combination of terpenoids and THC that endows each strain with a specific psychoactive flavor.

. . New Documents Suggest IRS Reads Emails Without a Warrant

Everyone knows the IRS is our nation’s tax collector, but it is also a law enforcement organization tasked with investigating criminal violations of the tax laws. New documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the IRS Criminal Tax Division has long taken the position that the IRS can read your emails without a warrant—a practice that one appeals court has said violates the Fourth Amendment (and we think most Americans would agree).

. . High-tech burglary suspect nabbed after secret camera found

The discovery of a hidden camera may help solve a series of break-ins at upscale homes in several North Texas cities. “This one has already been camouflaged,” said detective Ben Singleton, holding what looks like a piece of bark that would go unnoticed in most yards. It’s actually a video camera not much bigger than a matchbox, and it’s activated by a motion detector. Such cameras turned up in March planted outside several upscale homes in Dalworthington Gardens. “I’ve never seen anything like this. And most detectives in this area haven’t,” Singleton said. Earlier this month, John Anton discovered the first one near his driveway. “I had no idea what it was,” Anton said. “Very strange.” He took the device to Dalworthington Gardens police. “We tore one of these apart to figure out what it was all about,” Singleton said. The detective said it turned out to be surveillance for a long-running, sophisticated burglary scheme. But at first, police feared it might even be a kidnapping plot to

. . Rebecca Solnit by Astra Taylor

Elites tend to believe in a venal, selfish, and essentially monstrous version of human nature, which I sometimes think is their own human nature. I mean, people don’t become incredibly wealthy and powerful by being angelic, necessarily. They believe that only their power keeps the rest of us in line and that when it somehow shrinks away, our seething violence will rise to the surface—that was very clear in Katrina. Timothy Garton Ash and Maureen Dowd and all these other people immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started writing commentaries based on the assumption that the rumors of mass violence during Katrina were true. A lot of people have never understood that the rumors were dispelled and that those things didn’t actually happen; it’s tragic.

. . The GOP’s Drug-Testing Dragnet

The annual Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA) conference, held in 2012 in San Antonio, Texas, looks like any other industry gathering. The 600 or so attendees sip their complimentary Starbucks coffee, munch on small plates of muffins and fresh fruit, and backslap old acquaintances as they file into a sprawling Marriott hotel conference hall. They will hear a keynote address by Robert DuPont, who served as drug policy director under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Nothing odd about any of this until you consider that the main subject of the conference is urine.

. . DC Introduces First Transgender Character in Mainstream Comics

Once banned from the world of mainstream comic books by the infamous Comics Code Authority, LGBT characters now have a stronger presence in the world of superhero comics than ever before, with gay and lesbian heroes like Batwoman, Northstar and Green Lantern Alan Scott openly declaring who they are — and even getting married. Today, DC Comics told Wired that it will continue to expand the LGBT diversity of its superhero universe by introducing the first openly transgender character in a mainstream superhero comic.

. . Big Pharma Company Jacks Up Price of Overdose Life Saver by 1100%: Now, More People Will Die

A remarkable thing happened in 2008: drug overdose surpassed auto fatalities as the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. Public health officials declared an epidemic, and communities united to battle this new enemy that had left a staggering body count in its wake. The people had a weapon, naloxone, an antidote that reverses opiate overdose, and programs began popping up across the country to provide training and free naloxone to people at risk for overdose. But then Big Pharma stepped in. The same year that naloxone became so critical to saving lives, one pharmaceutical company secured a monopoly on its production and jacked up the prices by 1,100%.

. . 10 Weapons You Won’t Believe Are Legal

. . 5 Bizarre Sex Products Designed to Make You Feel Shame About Your Body

Bet you didn’t think you needed semen pills.

. . AGAMBEN TOYS – APPOSITE BAUBLES FOR THE STATE OF EXCEPTION

Riot Toys

. . Rat Chase Again Bedevils Fukushima Nuclear Plant

A blackout disabled cooling at four fuel pools last month, an event the company traced to a rat that might have gnawed on power cables and caused a short circuit. Engineers found its scorched body in a damaged switchboard. Tepco has since installed mousetraps at the site and promised to plug holes through which rats and other rodents might enter buildings and gnaw on important equipment. It has also promised to speed up work to install backup power cables to the fuel pools. But Friday afternoon, four workers using wire meshing to seal a space around electric cables caused a ground fault, or the accidental flow of current to the ground. No one was injured, but the ground fault shut off electricity to the cooling system at the No. 3 reactor fuel pool. “We were installing wire nets to keep the rats out. But the end of one of the wires may have momentarily come into contact with a live terminal,” said Masayuki Ono, general manager at Tepco’s Nuclear Power and Plant Siting Division. “…

. . Dogs Wearing Pantyhose: Owners Put Tights On Their Canines In China

People seem to have a love-hate relationship with dogs dressed up like humans, but that hasn’t stopped the Internet from churning out more ridiculous memes. The latest installment: Dogs wearing pantyhose (OK, we’re classing it up a bit, Dis Magazine called it “bitches wearing pantyhose”) is a trend picking up in China, according to Sharp Daily, a Hong Kong news site.

. . Man ‘took 40,000 ecstasy tablets’

At the height of his use, the man – known as “Mr A” – was taking 25 tablets a day, Psychosomatics journal revealed. The 37-year-old still had trouble with short-term memory problems seven years after he stopped taking the drug. Doctors at St George’s Hospital, London said Mr A’s case was extreme, but showed ecstasy’s long-term effects. It is possible to become psychologically dependent on the feelings associated with ecstasy but heavy daily use is extremely rare and it is not thought that people can become physically dependent Martin Barnes, DrugScope The doctors said it was the largest reported ecstasy lifetime consumption by one person, the previous being around 2,000 tablets. Writing in Psychosomatics, they say Mr A reported he had used ecstasy between the ages of 21 and 30. For two years, he took five tablets every weekend, rising to an average of 3.5 tablets per day for the next three years, then soaring to 25 tablets a day over the next four years.

. . The Tunnel People That Live Under The Streets Of America

Did you know that there are thousands upon thousands of homeless people that are living underground beneath the streets of major U.S. cities? It is happening in Las Vegas, it is happening in New York City and it is even happening in Kansas City. As the economy crumbles, poverty in the United States isabsolutely exploding and so is homelessness. In addition to the thousands of “tunnel people” living under the streets of America, there are also thousands that are living in tent cities, there are tens of thousands that are living in their vehicles and there are more than a million public school children that do not have a home to go back to at night. The federal government tells us that the recession “is over” and that “things are getting better”, and yet poverty and homelessness in this country continue to rise with no end in sight. So what in the world are things going to look like when the next economic crisis hits?

. . Amsterdam to create ‘scum villages’

Amsterdam is to create “Scum villages” where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and rehoused in caravans or containers with “minimal services” under constant police supervision.

. . US won’t be returning to moon, NASA chief says

America won’t be repeating that historic one small step anytime soon — not according to NASA chief Charlie Bolden, anyway. “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” Bolden told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week

. . I quit: Joel Osteen target of elaborate hoax

As many of you may know, and may have heard in the news recently, many of my sermons have deviated from traditional Christian doctrine. I have been accused of altering the ‘message’ to fit my own doctrine and dogma. Others have accused me of preaching ‘feel good Christianity’. I have also been accused of profiting greatly from my ministry, with my books and television deals. Many of their criticisms are legitimate. What they don’t know is that deep down in my heart, for a number of years now, I have been questioning the faith, Christianity and whether Jesus Christ is really my, or anyone’s, ‘savior’. I believe now that the Bible is a fallible, flawed, highly inconsistent history book that has been altered hundreds of times. There is zero evidence the Bible is the holy word of God. In fact, there is zero evidence “God” even exists. No God worth believing in is going to send you to Hell for not believing in him. Not even the worst sinner and scum of the Earth deserves eternal torment

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Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on May 16, 2013

Tags: Accidental Death, ACLU, ADD, African, African American, agriculture, alcohol, Allegedly, Amazing, Amendment, American, Ancient, Android, Animal, arrest, Article, Artist, Author, aviation, baby, bad, Bandwagon, Bank, Banned, Barack Obama, Barbie, battle, Berlin, Bible, BIG, BITCH, Bizarre, Black, Blackout, Body, Bomb, Book, bottom, brain, Bum, Businessman, bust, Butt, Cake, Camera, Can, Cannabinoids, Cannabis, Captive, Car, Case, Cell Phone, character, Characters, child, child porn, Christian, Christianity, Church, Club, Coffee, combination, Come, Comic, Comic Books, Comics, Commercial, communist, Communist Party, company, computer, condom, Congress, consumption, Control, Cool, Cop, Cops, Copyright, Corporate, Corrections, court, Credit, Creepy, Crime, Criminal, crisis, culprit, Culture, Damaged, damages, Dating, daughter, David, death, design, Detective, detention, Detonation, Director, discovery, Disney, dispute, Dream, Drink, Drug, Drug policy, Drugs, Dynamite, Earth, economic crisis, Economy, Ecstasy, Education, electric, Electricity, Elmo, empire, Enemy, enforcement, epidemic, Escape, evidence, Experience, Extremely, Facebook, fake, Family, Famous, Female, Films, Fire, Food, Foreign, Found, fraud, Free, Freedom, freedom of information, French, Fukushima, Gay, German, Germans, Girl, Girls, god, Google, Government, Gross, Guantanamo, Guns, Hallucinogenic, Hate, Health, Heart, Heavy, Hell, Heroin, Hidden, hidden camera, High, History, Hollywood, Holy, Home, Homeless, Hong Kong, hospital, Hotel, Human, Hungry, Illegal, Industrial, Industry, Infamous, influence, information, Infringement, Inmates, International, Internet, Italian, Jesus, jesus christ, Joint, judge, Kansas, Katrina, Kidnapping, killer, Killing, Lake, Lesbian, LGBT, Limitless, List, Live, London, Look, magazine, Mainstream, Man, manager, Manhattan, Marijuana, Mario, Media, Mental health, Michigan, Military, Millionaire, money, Monopoly, month, Moon, mouth, naloxone, Narcotics, NASA, National security, New York, New York City, News, newspaper, Nixon, NOT, Nuclear, Nuclear power, Obama, Obscene, officer, official, Old, opiate, organization, Original, overdose, overdoses, Owners, oxycontin, Painkillers, Pantyhose, Paris, park, Party, Pedophile, Penis, Pentagon, Period, person, Peru, Pharma, phone, Photo, Photos, Picture, Planet, poisoning, Police, Poor, Popular, Porn, Porn Industry, possession, Poverty, Power, Pregnant, president, President Obama, Prison, prisoner, problem, project, property, Psychotic, Public health, quality, rat, Rats, Reactor, reason, Recession, Record, Recording, Records, relationship, Report, Richard Nixon, Riot, Rotten, Rumors, safety, School, Seal, Secret, Sect, Security, SeMeN, Service, Sex, Sex Education, Sexual, Sheriff, Short, Sick, site, Skunk, smell, smells, Social, social networking, Some, somebody, something, Soviet, space, Special, Species, Speed, Star, Story, Street, Streets, stripped, Sugar, Superhero, Supreme, Surveillance, surveillance state, System, Target, Television, TEPCO, Terrorism, Texas, THC, Ties, time, Times Square, Toys, Tracking, trafficking, Transgender, Trend, trouble, Tunisia, Tunnel, Twitter, U.S., Ubiquitous, Underground, United Nations, United States, Universe, University, US, USA, vagina, Verizon, Veteran, Video, Violence, Wall Street, warrant, Washington, Water, Weapons, webcam, White, Wild, Wired, Woman, World, Worst, WRONG, Young

Sugar Coated Death

. . Scientist calls for caffeine to be a regulated substance: “In 1911, acting on authority vested by the recently enacted Food and Drug Act, agents in the United States seized quantities of Coca-Cola syrup because they considered the caffeine content to be a significant threat to public health,” he wrote. “Following lengthy legal proceedings, Coca-Cola agreed to decrease the caffeine content of the drink, and further legal action ceased.” “Armed with improved knowledge of caffeine toxicity and faced with extensive evidence of substantial harm to public health, today’s authorities appear more perplexed and less decisive than their counterparts of more than a century earlier,” James continued. “In light of current international befuddlement and inaction, legislators, policy makers, and regulators of today confront a stark question — how many caffeine-related fatalities and near-misses must there be before we regulate?”; .; .
Underground Harlem Shake Dance Gets Up To 15 Australian Miners Fired: An Australian mining services company has fired up to 15 workers who performed an underground version of the Harlem Shake and posted it online, in a second incident of the Internet dance craze sparking safety concerns.
. . Speed Reading: Ronald Carver, author of the 1990 book The Causes of High and Low Reading Achievement, is one researcher who has done extensive testing of readers and reading speed, and thoroughly examined the various speed reading techniques and the actual improvement likely to be gained. One notable test he did pitted four groups of the fastest readers he could find against each other. The groups consisted of champion speed readers, fast college readers, successful professionals whose jobs required a lot of reading, and students who had scored highest on speed reading tests. Carver found that of his superstars, none could read faster than 600 words per minute with more than 75% retention of information.
. . Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies: Precisely how did the sugar industry engineer its turnaround? The answer is found in more than 1,500 pages of internal memos, letters, and company board reports we discovered buried in the archives of now-defunct sugar companies as well as in the recently released papers of deceased researchers and consultants who played key roles in the industry’s strategy. They show how Big Sugar used Big Tobacco-style tactics to ensure that government agencies would dismiss troubling health claims against their products. Compared to the tobacco companies, which knew for a fact that their wares were deadly and spent billions of dollars trying to cover up that reality, the sugar industry had a relatively easy task. With the jury still out on sugar’s health effects, producers simply needed to make sure that the uncertainty lingered. But the goal was the same: to safeguard sales by creating a body of evidence companies could deploy to counter any unfavorable research.
. . Underweb anger as Silk Road Australian seller does a runner: The top Australian seller on underground online drug marketplace Silk Road has gone rogue and made off with tens of thousands of dollars, while several other Australian sellers appear to be missing in action. The exodus comes after 32-year-old Paul Howard was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail this month by a Melbourne judge after being caught using Silk Road to import a “smorgasbord” of drugs such as cocaine, MDMA and amphetamine, which he then sold. Now Australian Silk Road user EnterTheMatrix, who received dozens of glowing reviews and more than 99 per cent positive feedback selling prescription medication, LSD, MDMA and other substances via express post, has disappeared, leaving behind scores of angry customers who have paid for but not received their items.
. . What is 25-I, the drug used by fatally shot USA student Gil Collar?: The drug found in the University of South Alabama student who was fatally shot by a police officer in October is a research drug similar, but stronger, than LSD. Officials announced Friday that 18-year-old Gil Collar had apparently taken a tiny amount of 25I-C-NBOMe, known as 25-I before attending the BayFest music festival on Oct. 6. Hours later, he was apparently immune to punches he received from a student whose car window he was trying to climb in. He was able to stand up after a police officer shot him.
. . Tripping in Prison: “One time there was this big fight on the yard between the Border Brothers and Gangster Disciples, this was at FCI Manchester in Kentucky, and we were tripping our heads off,” he recalls. “That shit blew my mind. It was like a movie. I literally have flashbacks of that scene to this day. The most vivid image…was this big black dude getting his head busted open by a little Mexican with a pipe… That picture has stayed with me. And it sucked because we got locked down for that shit for three days and I was tripping in my cell the whole time, trying not to freak out.”
. . Calgary man gets a year for growing opium poppies: Gurdev Samra’s garden of opium poppies once offered him a euphoric cup of tea, but on Monday it made him the first man in Canada to be convicted of growing the illicit plant. Samra, 63, was handed a one year conditional sentence after pleading guilty to growing 1,200 opium poppy plants at his Calgary home, which was busted by police last July. The judge took a dim view of the poppy garden, despite the fact cultivation of the plants was for personal use in tea —something Samra has done since he was a child in India.
. . Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler spent $6 million on cocaine: The flamboyant 65-year-old frontman admits he has shovelled at least $5-6 million dollars worth of marching powder up his nose. In an interview on 60 Minutes this Sunday night, reporter Liz Hayes tells Steve she’d heard around 20 million bucks worth of cocaine had seen the inside nostrils of the ‘Demon of Screamin’. “Realistically, 5 or 6,” says Tyler. “But it doesn’t matter. You also could say I snorted half of Peru, but it doesn’t matter.”
. . Texas Declares War on Robots: There’s growing privacy concern over flying robots, or “drones”. Organizations like the EFF and ACLU have been raising the alarm over increased government surveillance of US citizens. Legislators haven’t been quick to respond to concerns of government spying on citizens. But Texas legislators are apparently quite concerned that private citizens operating hobby drones might spot environmental violations by businesses. You may recall the story from 2012 in which a hobbyist operating a small UAV over public land in Dallas, TX accidentally photographed a Dallas meat-packing plant illegally dumping pig blood into the Trinity river, resulting in an EPA indictment. Representative Lance Gooden has introduced HB912 to solve this “problem”.
. . DHS built domestic surveillance tech into Predator drones: The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department’s unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States’ northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police. Homeland Security’s specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not,” meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify “signals interception” technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and “direction finding” technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.
. . Legislator to small business owner: bicycling bad for the environment: Also, you claim that it is environmentally friendly to ride a bike. But if I am not mistaken, a cyclists has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.
. . 185,000 spyware emails were sent to Aaron’s computers – Technology on NBCNews.com: Spyware installed on computers leased from furniture renter Aaron’s Inc. secretly sent 185,000 emails containing sensitive information — including pictures of nude children and people having sex — back to the company’s corporate computers, according to court documents filed Wednesday in a class-action lawsuit.
. . NYPD lied under oath to prosecute Occupy activist: “Premo charged the police like a linebacker, taking out a lieutenant and resisting arrest so forcefully that he fractured an officer’s bone. That’s the story prosecutors told in Premo’s trial, and it’s the general story his arresting officer testified to under oath as well,” Pinto writes. He adds that attorneys for the defendant underwent a lengthy search to try and find video that verified their own account yjpihj, and found one in the hands of Democracy Now. “Far from showing Premo tackling a police officer,” writes Pinto, that video “shows cops tackling him as he attempted to get back on his feet.” The footage obtained from Democracy Now also showed that an NYPD officer was filming the arrest as well, but prosecutors told Premo’s attorney that no such footage existed.
. . Lil Poopy: why is the child-rapper in a spot of bother with the Man?: Yes, Lil Poopy (real name, Luis Rivera Jnr) would agree. He’s a child-rapper, you see, and as he explains in his new song, a cover of French Montana’s Pop That: “Coke ain’t a bad word, it’s only soda.” I take his point. But should a nine-year-old even have an opinion on such matters? No, basically. And now the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families are investigating his father, Luis Rivera Snr, to decide whether the boy’s music career constitutes child abuse. Because he makes one reference to the word “coke”? No. Because he makes numerous references, appears with an adult band called the Coke Boys who know him as “the Cocaine Cowboy”, calls himself “Boston Lou” in homage to legendary cocaine smuggler Boston George, and smacks an adult woman’s jiggling bottom suggestively at the end of the video.
. . U.S. dairy industry petitions FDA to approve aspartame as hidden, unlabeled additive in milk, yogurt, eggnog and cream: But now the situation is getting even more insane than you could have imagined: the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have filed a petition with the FDA asking the FDA to alter the definition of “milk” to secretly include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose. Importantly, none of these additives need to be listed on the label. They will simply be swept under the definition of “milk,” so that when a company lists “milk” on the label, it automatically includes aspartame or sucralose. And if you’re trying to avoid aspartame, you’ll have no way of doing so because it won’t be listed on the label. This isn’t only for milk, either: It’s also for yogurt, cream, sour cream, eggnog, whipping cream and a total of 17 products, all of which are listed in the petition at FDA.gov.
. . Mother Kills 9-Year-Old Son For Having Small Penis In Indonesia: An Indonesian woman drowned her nine-year-old son in the bath, claiming she was worried that his “small penis” would affect his prospects for the future, a police spokesman said Thursday. The 38-year-old woman from the capital Jakarta told police her son had had a small penis prior to being circumcised, but that it appeared to shrink further after the operation, police spokesman Rikwanto, who goes by one name, told AFP. “She told police investigators that she killed him as he would have a bleak future with his small penis,” Rikwanto said. “She drowned her son in a bathtub filled with water. She then dressed him and laid him on a bed. After that, she went to a nearby police office to report her crime.”

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

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on March 5, 2013

Tags: Accident, ACLU, Acting, action, Alarm, Amphetamine, Anger, arrest, attorney, Author, authority, bad, Band, BIG, Big Black, Bike, Black, Blood, Body, Book, Boston, bottom, Busted, caffeine, Can, Car, carbon, Caught, chemical, child, Children, Coca-Cola, Cocaine, coke, Collar, college, company, Cops, Corporate, court, cover, Cowboy, Craze, Cult, cultivation, Dance, Deadly, democracy, Domestic, Drug, Drugs, dust, enforcement, EPA, evidence, Exodus, Fast, FDA, fight, Fired, Flashback, Flashbacks, Food, footage, Found, Freak, French, frequency, Future, Gangster, gas, goal, Government, Harlem, harm, Health, Heart, High, homage, homeland security, Human, Illicit, Industry, information, Insane, International, Internet, Interview, jail, judge, knowledge, Legal, low, LSD, Man, Manchester, MDMA, Mexican, Monday, month, Music, Natural, Night, NOT, Nude, NYPD, officer, Online, Opium, opium poppy, Papers, Penis, Picture, Pictures, Police, Poppy, powder, Predator, prescription, privacy, Report, reporter, Research, researcher, Ride, safety, scene, Search, Secret, Security, SeMeN, SeMeNSPeRmS, Service, Sex, Shit, Shotgun, Silk Road, smuggler, Snorted, Some, Southern, Speed, Spying, Spyware, Steve, Story, Student, Sugar, Surveillance, Sweet, syrup, technology, Texas, threat, time, Tobacco, Underground, United States, University, US, USA, Video, War, Weird, Whipping, Woman

Anthrax Heroin Is Back!



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✪ French Intravenous Heroin User Contracts Anthrax: A case of anthrax infection has been reported in a user of injectable heroin in France in the Rhone-Alpes, while four other cases, including two deaths, were reported in two other countries in the European Union, it was learned Friday from medical sources. An outbreak of anthrax related to injections of contaminated heroin occurred in 2009/2010, causing the infection of 119 people in Scotland, 5 in England and two in Germany. The infection by the bacterium, _Bacillus anthracis_, was diagnosed in France on July 9 in an intravenous heroin user, aged of 27, who, after a stay in intensive care, is currently convalescing. “He is recovering,” the Director of Public Health ARS-Sydney, Anne-Marie Durand told AFP. “There is [presently - Mod.MHJ] no known link between the four European cases (three in Germany with 1 death and one death in Denmark) and the French case,” she said.
✪ Indifferent cats in amateur porn: They’re watching us but they don’t care at all. Furry observers are being collected here.
✪ Tattoo spell check: Even more tattoo misspells: Misspelled tattoos are the gift that keeps on giving. Here are more of the worst crimes ever made against the skin.
✪ Henry Rollins: The One Decision That Changed My Life Forever: Henry Rollins: I looked at the ice cream scoop in my hand…my chocolate-bespattered apron…and my future in the world of minimum wage work…or I could go up to New York and audition for this crazy band who was my favorite. What’s the worst that’s gonna happen to me? I miss a day of work…ooh, there goes 21 bucks. In the audition, he sang every song the band had ever written, improvising most of the lyrics. Then came the scary part: he got the job. Henry Rollins: They said ‘Ok, you’re in.” I said “What do you mean?” They said “you’re the singer in Black Flag.” I said “So what do I do?” They said: “*snort* you quit your job, you pack your gear, you meet us on the road. Here’s the tour itinerary. Here’s the lyrics.”
✪ “White Power” Toothbrush
✪ F.D.A. Surveillance of Scientists Spread to Outside Critics: A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.
✪ Women could delay the menopause indefinitely with ovary transplant: doctors: A technique to remove pieces of ovary, store it for decades and then replace it with delicate surgery could effectively put a woman’s menopause ‘on ice’, doctors said. The only thing preventing them from having babies into their old age would be their physical ability to carry a pregnancy, they said. The controversial notion would allow career women peace of mind with a fertility insurance policy so they can find a partner, settle down and become financially secure before starting a family.
✪ One Mighty and Strong: Mormon Prophecy and Mitt Romney: Prior to his death, Smith had written a prophecy declaring that there would one day come a man “mighty and strong” (see scriptural reference at the top of this post) who would bring order to the “house of God”. Many (probably Joseph included) thought this mighty and strong man would be Smith himself. With the loss of their Prophet, Mormons struggled to understand who would fill those mighty shoes. After Smith’s death, a Mormon tradition arose about a Mormon on a “white horse” who would come at a time when the Constitution was “hanging by a thread” and would restore the promised land to the Mormon people.
✪ Can I get my dog circumcised?: I just got a new dog from the human society, and I was wondering if it was possible to get him circumcised?
✪ Fashion for tight jeans is increasing testicular problems among men: ”My advice would be to make sure you leave plenty of room around the groin area and that your pants and trousers feel comfortable so you’re not being restricted in any way. ”Men who wear tight or ill-fitting trousers, or underwear which is restrictive around the groin area could be damaging their health. ”Wearing tight-fitting clothing over a prolonged period of time can lead to urinary tract infections leading to over-activity of the bladder – a type of bladder weakness as well as a low sperm count and fungal infections. ”Please don’t put style before health.” Twisted testicles occur when tight trousers prevent the spermatic cord from moving freely, meaning it twists and leads to testicular torsion which cuts off the blood supply requiring immediate surgery to prevent a gangrenous testicle.
✪ That’s Not My Phone, It’s My Tracker: THE device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. Let’s stop calling them phones. They are trackers.
✪ Almost All Homeland Security Grants Go to Jewish Non-Profits: Jewish institutions throughout the United States will receive $9.7 million in federal anti-terrorism grants this year out of a total of $10 million allocated to not-for-profit institutions by the Department of Homeland Security. That’s $6 million less than last year. But thanks to sharp cuts this year in the overall pool of money available through this program, the percentage of funds going to Jewish groups has nevertheless jumped substantially. A full 97% of the available funds in the Non-Profit Security Grant Program for 2012 have been allocated to Jewish organizations, compared with 73% that went to Jewish groups from 2007 through 2010. In 2011, Jewish groups received about 80% of NSGP funds.
✪ Woman Charged With Lewd Acts With Minor In Tanning Booth: The boy told investigators it began when Brashear asked him to spot her on the weights, then talked him into going into the tanning booth with her. Once inside, Brashear stripped off her clothes from the waist down and began kissing him, he said. Brashear stated to police she knew the boy was only 15, “there was nothing wrong or illegal about giving someone a kiss” and denied taking off her clothes, the affidavit says.
✪ Tanning-bed videographer, Doyce Dean Griffis, gets 17 1/2 years in prison: From February 2000 to April 2011, Griffis operated a tanning bed in a barn on his property at 2261 SE 128th St. in Starke. Customers would pay to use the bed by putting money in a slot. The bed had a two-way mirror, according to the government, and Griffis made a hole in an vent near the foot of the bed. Through the mirror and hole, he recorded customers as they undressed and got in and out of the tanning bed. His victims were “dozens of female customers, including more than 20 minor children,” the news release states. “Griffis produced, collected, and maintained the sexually explicit video recordings … for his own sexual gratification, and kept detailed notes on the types of physical and sexual characteristics of his customers.”
✪ Dog X-ray used in arrest of doctor in prescription probe: The undercover sheriff’s deputy pretending to be a patient in pain presented a Glendora physician with an X-ray to accompany her tale of an injured back and neck. The only problem was the X-ray revealed a “tail” of a different kind — one belonging to a dog. Though the X-ray for a German shepherd had the dog’s name, Recon, and the name of an animal hospital printed on it, the doctor wrote the deputy a prescription for a powerful narcotic painkiller and a muscle relaxant, law enforcement officials said.
✪ Jerry Sandusky ‘serenaded’ with Pink Floyd lyrics by prison inmates: An inmate who identified himself only as “Josh” told The Daily that the last time Sandusky was in jail, he and other prisoners serenaded the former assistant coach with a famous line from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” “At night, we were singing ‘Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone,’ ” Josh said.
✪ Defiance home yields rare stash of vintage baseball cards: But one item made him stop. Frozen in time beneath a wooden doll house and a century’s worth of dust, Mr. Kissner found a cardboard green box filled with baseball cards. The names sounded familiar — Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Connie Mack — and he soon contacted an auction house in Dallas. It was his family’s winning lottery ticket. Experts say the trove of about 700 nearly mint cards just might represent the greatest and rarest discovery in the sports card industry’s history. The best of the collection is expected to fetch more than $500,000 at the National Sports Collectors Convention next month in Baltimore while the entire stock could bring in $3 million.
✪ Criminals steal $400 gold chain off neck of 3-year-old boy sitting in his stroller in Brooklyn: He and his thug pal had stalked the family back to their home from the laundry, where Guerrero had just finished her weekly wash. “They were eye-balling them — and the chain,” said one police source. The duo attacked as the family got inside the lobby of their building, kicking in the door after the desperate mother had locked it. After neighbors started coming out of their apartments at the sound of the mother’s screams, the crooks fled with the necklace.
✪ Naked man caught masturbating while driving: The tow truck driver told investigators he saw a naked man masturbating while driving the Cherokee. “The male’s hands were in his groin area moving around,” the police report said. When Casey was eventually pulled over along the side of Interstate 95, it took him a moment to come to a stop because, according to the arresting officer’s notes in the report, he was still trying to get dressed. When the officer asked him why he was driving naked, “Casey stated that he has problems with this and he is getting therapy,” the report said, adding that the man couldn’t explain why he was naked. The officer then patted Casey down and found a toy pistol tied to his leg, part of which was hidden in Casey’s behind. Another portion of the contraption was tied around his genitals, the report said.
✪ Hasan Bin Sabbah and the Secret Order of Hashishins: Nothing is True, Everything is Permissible. – Hasan bin Sabbah The story of Hasan bin Sabbah is a tale of sex, drugs, myth, and murder. A secluded mountain fortress, a paradisial garden, poison dipped daggers, and covert political maneuverings are the ingredients of this alchemical mixture, which is undoubtedly one of the most intriguing true stories ever told.
✪ Scientist: Pushing OxyContin addicts to heroin reveals ‘utter failure’ of drug war: “We spend billions and billions trying to interdict the importation [of drugs] into the country, trying to interdict the wholesale and retail of drugs, but when’s the last time someone saw a major public service announcement saying, ‘If you have opiate dependence, there’s treatment available, call this number’?” he asked.
✪ Transgender motel housekeeper touched boy’s genitals: According to the report, the victim heard Olmos say “room service” outside of their roomand the victim told her to “come in.” Olmos asked if they had any dirty towels and if the victim was alone, which he was, according to the police report. Olmos then asked “Can I touch?” The victim responded, “touch what?” Police said Olmos then grabbed the victim’s genitals on the outside of his shorts and said “you hot.” The victim then responded “you’re weird” and walked to the bathroom, waiting for Olmos to leave, according to the report.
✪ Police probe museum theft of teeth from Strauss and Brahms: The teeth of two of the world’s most famous composers have been stolen from their graves by a man who says he wants to start a museum. The alleged Czech thief who has boasted about his crime on the internet says he wants to now display the famous teeth and dentures he has robbed not just from Austrian waltz king Johann Strauss Jr. and German Romantic composer Johannes Brahms, but from hundreds of other graves as well. Austrian police were alerted to the crime after the grave robber released a video where he can be seen apparently pushing the cover to one of the composer’s tomb open – and pulling out a skull.
✪ Chicken coop case: Teen allegedly wore a shock collar: New details were revealed to WTVM about an adopted teenager who was allegedly kept in a chicken coop in Taylor County, GA. According to agents at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the 15-year-old girl told authorities a shock collar for dogs was placed around her neck and used on her several times. Investigators say a remote key fob was used to shock the girl at will by anyone in control of the collar.
✪ NSA whistleblower: They’re assembling information on every U.S. citizen: Binney, who resigned from the NSA in 2001 over its domestic surveillance program, had just delivered a keynote speech in which he revealed what Shively called “evidence which we have not seen until this point.” “They’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country … and assembling that information,” Binney explained. “So government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.” He estimated that something like 1.6 billion logs have been processed since 2001.
✪ Reformulated Drug Sends Users Elsewhere: “Abuse-deterrent formulations may not be the ‘magic bullets’ that many hoped they would be in solving the growing problem of opioid abuse,” the researchers wrote in the July 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
✪ Angry dad beats up facebook pervert: It began recently when the Cookeville man noticed that his 12-year-old daughter was receiving Facebook messages from an adult man he does not know. He asked his daughter about the messages and she did not know the man either. The father looked up the messenger’s Facebook page and there found his date of birth and phone number. He then decided to send messages to the Monterey man while posing as his own daughter. He sent text messages by phone to the man, and the man messaged back, thinking he was communicating with the little girl. Allegedly, he asked to see a photo of her in a swim suit. He also agreed to meet her at Cane Creek Park. But once he arrived there, it was her dad who met him, and he was very angry, according to police reports on the case. Before police arrived on the scene, the two men had a fight, and the Monterey man, who was bleeding, immediately told arriving officers that he deserved it.
✪ The Increased Criminalization of Dissent: While law enforcement and the government would like citizens to believe measures such as these are their way of catching up with the rapid pace of evolving technology in regards to criminal behavior, something more sinister could be at work. Given the interest the Department of Homeland Security has had in Occupy movements around the country as well as some of the more draconian police tactics that have been used on demonstrators, the increased surveillance of internet users and the content they choose to share via social networking, mobile devices or the web, it’s not difficult to call these information requests police state type tactics.
✪ Quadcopter drone group held in London airport on suspicion of terrorism: Fresh from performing at Science Gallery in Dublin last night during the opening of Hack the City, an English group of urbanists, technologists and architects who created GPS-enabled quadcopter drones, were held at London Southend Airport on suspicion of terrorism and recorded under the UK’s Terrorism Act. The group, known as Tomorrows Thoughts Today, had been performing their Electronic Countermeasures robotic ballet in the sky show at Science Gallery for the opening of the three-month Hack the City exhibition in Dublin City. The trio, headed up by Liam Young, had created the robotic drones from components that were originally intended for police surveillance. The drones had been swarming around Science Gallery last night to show how they can broadcast their own Wi-Fi network as a flying pirate file-sharing formation.
✪ Air Pump Stuck Into Chinese Child’s Anus as Prank Goes Wrong: Just went to the hospital to visit Du Chuanwang. This 13-year-old mother-less child had gone to work in an auto repair shop to help take care of his family ended up having a high pressure pneumatic air pump gun stuck into his anus by two workers who then pumped air into him! The child’s intestines have essentially exploded, his scrotum now as large as a watermelon! His internal organs have all been squeezed together by the air pumped into his body, so horrific!
✪ US “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme Will Roll Out Gradually: More than a year after the MPAA and RIAA announced their groundbreaking anti-piracy deal with U.S. Internet providers, the first warning letters are yet to be sent out. Previously, July 2012 was coined as the start date but the responsible parties are still not ready to launch. While TorrentFreak has learned that various ISPs will start the implementation at different times, it remains a mystery which company will be spying on filesharers. casSomewhere in the near future the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) will start to track down online ‘pirates’ as part of an agreement all major US Internet providers struck with the MPAA and RIAA. The parties agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After five or six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures, including temporary disconnections.
✪ Team USA To Be Decked Out in Uniforms Made in China: They are the pride of America – Team U.S.A. – and for the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in London, they’ll be proudly wearing red, white and blue, from beret to blazer. The classic American style – shown in an image above – was crafted by designer Ralph Lauren. But just how American is it? When ABC News looked at the labels, it found “made in China.” Every item in the uniforms that the U.S. athletes will be wearing at the opening ceremony in London will carry an overseas label.
✪ Agenda 21 Micro-Apartment Scheme Being Beta-Tested in NYC: The globalist design for micro-apartments is being championed by New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. These “studio and one-bedroom apartments” will be no bigger than 275 to 300 sq ft. These tiny living spaces are smaller than currently allowed by building regulations, according to a statement by Bloomberg’s office; however the zoning regulations will be waived in over to construct the first of many compact pack ‘em and stack ‘em housing model in the city-owned area of Kips Bay.
✪ Octopus with Human Head Caught in Indonesia: A weird octopus with human head and female face caught by a fisherman in Padang, Indonesia. After showing the nature freak to the public and its pictures to be taken , he brought it home along with other octopus and squids to be cooked by his wife.
✪ In Simulation, Moon Dust Found to Be Toxic to Humans: Because we don’t spend a large chunk of time up there, we haven’t done too much research on the long-term health effects of living on the moon. But a paper titled “Toxicity of Lunar Dust,” covering several aspects of the effects of moon dust on the human body, offers some insight: the moon is basically trying to kill you. Not actively, of course, but there are a lot of reasons to avoid the stuff (and no, a spacesuit isn’t going to save you). The big problem is inhalation; even with a suit, dust can end up back in suit-free living spaces. Then the dust can travel inside travelers’ lungs, causing inflammation and possibly, asbestos-style, even increasing the risk of developing cancer. The particles might be able to travel through the lungs more easily in the lower gravity environment, and exposure to UV and proton radiation could make the dust even more toxic.
✪ Marketers Track Retinas to Find What Draws Consumers: To find out what really draws their test shoppers’ attention, companies like Procter & Gamble Co., Unilever PLC and Kimberly-Clark Corp. are combining three-dimensional computer simulations of product designs and store layouts with eye-tracking technology. And that, in turn, is helping them roll out new products faster and come up with designs and shelf layouts that boost sales.
✪ Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever: Mayhew called them “sewer hunters” or “toshers,” and the latter term has come to define the breed, though it actually had a rather wider application in Victorian times–the toshers sometimes worked the shoreline of the Thames rather than the sewers, and also waited at rubbish dumps when the contents of damaged houses were being burned and then sifted through the ashes for any items of value. They were mostly celebrated, nonetheless, for the living that the sewers gave them, which was enough to support a tribe of around 200 men–each of them known only by his nickname: Lanky Bill, Long Tom, One-eyed George, Short-armed Jack. The toshers earned a decent living; according to Mayhew’s informants, an average of six shillings a day–an amount equivalent to about $50 today.
✪ Bravery and drone pilots: The effort to depict drone warfare as some sort of courageous and noble act is intensifying: The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield. . . . [Army Institute of Heraldry chief Charles] Mugno said most combat decorations require “boots on the ground” in a combat zone, but he noted that “emerging technologies” such as drones and cyber combat missions are now handled by troops far removed from combat.
✪ Student victim of terrorist photo blunder: A German man opened the paper one morning to find a photo of himself identified as a wanted terrorist, in what seemed like a thriller plot turned into sinister reality. He still does not know who took the picture of him.
✪ FYI: How Can I Protect My Cell Phone Data Records From Law Enforcement Subpoenas?: When it came to light that law enforcement has issued millions of annual requests/demands to the wireless carriers (AT&T;, Verizon, etc) to hand over user data, we all got a little concerned. Our carriers know everything about us, and according to findings by Rep. Markey (D-MA), “Information shared with law enforcement includes data such as geolocation information, content of text messages, wiretaps, among others.” But! We have weapons. Here are some tricks to help protect your privacy.
✪ ArtWalk Riot: Police vs Protesters over Sidewalk Chalk [Video]: The LAPD takes sidewalk chalk very seriously. Seriously enough to send 140 riot police to forcibly stop an Occupy LA group from drawing on the sidewalk during LA Artwalk. You can see eyewitness video below. 19 people were arrested after the police attacked the Chalk Walk demonstration with batons, rubber bullets, and tear gas.
✪ In Germany, Ruling Over Circumcision Sows Anxiety and Confusion: “The often very aggressive prejudice against religion as backward, irrational and opposed to science is increasingly defining popular opinion,” said Michael Bongardt, a professor of ethics from Berlin’s Free University who added that the ruling reflected a profound lack of understanding in modern Germany for religious belief.
✪ Sears now adds bestiality to its website: Explained AFA, “But that’s not the worst of it. Sears also sells books on bestiality and zoophilia. Titled ‘Dearest Pet, On Bestiality’ and “Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual Relations with Animals,’ these books are ‘how to’ manuals for people who want to have sex with animals.”
✪ Israel’s ‘Highless’ Marijuana & the CBD vs. THC Conundrum: The Israeli company responsible for developing Avidekel (pictured above), Tikun Olam, is not the first to breed a strain of cannabis that contains almost no THC at all. In 2005, GW Pharmaceuticals (creator of Sativex) grew “virtually mono-cannabinoidic plants that produce high percentages of these target cannabinoids: THC, CBD, THC-V, CBC, CBD-V, CBG or CBN.” Project CBD tested 17 different mothers of Cannatonic – a strain famous for its high CBD levels. Cannatonic #6 was high in CBD with hardly any THC, whereas the other plants were high in THC and low in CBD or high in both. Perhaps the great variety of results from different plants was because the Cannatonic strain is unstable, or perhaps people were getting different results from different growing conditions.
✪ Woman tells police man sucked her toe at Grovetown Walmart: The 18-year-old said she was shopping when a man, who looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, walked up and asked if her toenails were painted, according to a Columbia County Sheriff’s Office incident report. After replying yes and questioning why he wanted to know, the woman was asked if she’d watched America’s Funniest Home Videos. The man told her he was with the TV show and if she complied with his requests, everything she purchased that day would be free. She said she reluctantly agreed to let him take a photo of her foot. He asked if he could kiss her foot as part of the prank and she agreed. The man guided her to an area behind a clothing rack, dropped to the floor, grabbed her ankle and told her, “Don’t worry. I don’t bite.” He then started sucking on her big toe. The woman said she screamed at him to stop. Before the man ran from the store, he told her, “It tasted so good, though.” Thanks Jasmine
✪ Madonna Hit With Lawsuit Over ‘Vogue’ Sample: A Delaware company has hit Madonna and her label WB Records with a lawsuit claiming the pop star stole portions of one of their songs for her hit 1990 hit “Vogue,” reports E!. Pointing to a song called “Love Break,” released around 1977, VMG claims, “The portions of ‘Love Break,’ which have been copied into ‘Vogue’ and all its various ‘mixes,’ ‘remixes,’ videos, YouTube versions, etc., are numerous but intentionally hidden. The horn and strings in ‘Vogue’ are intentionally sampled from ‘Love Break’ throughout.” The company also says music producer Richard “Shep” Pettibone facilitated the process by altering the samples after he was originally hired by VMG to remix “Love Break,” later working on “Vogue.” “The unauthorized sampling was deliberately hidden by [Madonna] within ‘Vogue’ so as to avoid detection. It was only when VMG specifically looked for the sample, with the technology available to it in 2011, that the sampling could be confirmed,” VMG said.
✪ Bronx clothing designer says Jay-Z owes him $7 million in unpaid royalties for creating Roc-A-Fella’s label logo: A Bronx clothing designer says superstar Jay-Z and his former Roc-A-Fella record label partners owe him $7 million in unpaid royalties for designing the label logo, one of the best known symbols in rap music. In a copyright infringement suit filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Thursday, Dwayne Walker says he created the design. “The logo has become universally recognized as an iconic symbol of Jay-Z, one of the most successful recording artists in the history of popular music,” the suit says. It says Walker came up with the logo in 1995 when Roc-A-Fella was just starting out. The label is now a subsidiary of Universal Music Group.
✪ Serial groper tried to use ‘caffeine defense’ to explain assault on teenage girls: A school bus driver who was convicted of assault for groping teens and women says an excessive intake of caffeine drove him to the acts. Kenneth Sands, 51, from Seattle, tried to use what is being called the caffeine defense at his sentencing on Tuesday. Sands had been convicted in Lewis County Superior Court of molesting three high school volleyball players and two women during and after a volleyball game in Onalaska on October 18, 2011. Sands says it was caffeine that had driven him to act out of character and that drinking too much caused a psychotic episode.
✪ Study: The ‘gateway drug’ is alcohol, not marijuana: A study in the August edition of The Journal of School Health finds that the generations old theory of a “gateway drug” effect is in fact accurate for some drug users, but shifts the blame for those addicts’ escalating substance abuse away from marijuana and onto the most pervasive and socially accepted drug in American life: alcohol.
✪ Are Mormon Underwear Magic Between the Sheets?: Unfortunately those who have been fantasizing about a romp in which layers of white cotton create the perfect sense of mystery (or bondage), exMormons offer few words of encouragement. Discomfort seems to be the predominant theme. I was continuously battling wedgies–often in public; how the people would stare as I would try to wrestle crumpled material out of my crack. Lady DB If you have ever worn the modern ones you should appreciate the distance these have come. When I first got married they came in a one piece get up with a wide neck so you could step into them. The back had a split crotch (not the kind in kinky panties) but this huge wide sloppy split that would separate under your clothes, leaving a draft in your nether region much of the time. The little panel they sew into the ladies special part was so poorly designed that it would roll and twist till you felt like you were skewered by a roll of old toilet paper.
✪ Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity [REPORT]: Facebook and other social platforms are watching users’ chats for criminal activity and notifying police if any suspicious behavior is detected, according to a report. The screening process begins with scanning software that monitors chats for words or phrases that signal something might be amiss, such as an exchange of personal information or vulgar language. The software pays more attention to chats between users who don’t already have a well-established connection on the site and whose profile data indicate something may be wrong, such as a wide age gap. The scanning program is also “smart” — it’s taught to keep an eye out for certain phrases found in the previously obtained chat records from criminals including sexual predators. If the scanning software flags a suspicious chat exchange, it notifies Facebook security employees, who can then determine if police should be notified.
✪ Doctor Tried Bath Salts and Liked It: In Defense of Bath Salts: Pemberton tried it with another doctor and some friends on a Saturday in March of 2010. This is how he described the experience: A few minutes later, we were all sitting around in a euphoric haze, smiling benignly but with an incomprehensible, overwhelming desire to dance. It was nearly impossible to keep still. Then things became very vivid and real and everything everyone said suddenly became very important. Before we knew it we were piling into a cab, laughing and giggling uncontrollably and going to a club. The effects lasted for about another two hours …. I’d love to be able to tell you that I had a hideous time when I took mephedrone but the truth is, I didn’t. It was a lovely feeling and I can completely understand why people would use it.
✪ Nobody seems to find it weird Mitt Romney used to dress up like a police officer and pull people over for fun: Sometimes when I’m lying in bed at night counting sheep and thinking about the day I often wonder about: 1) ponies and 2) the fact that a bigger deal hasn’t been made about the fact Mitt Romney used to dress up like a police officer in college and pull people over. For fun. College is a time in many Americans’ lives when they do stupid shit like smoke too much pot, drink a lot, or have a lot of sex. That’s considered pretty “de rigueur” in college; these are kinks you work out of your system. You then leave said institution to go through the modern world paying your taxes and doing the right thing. But the GOP presidential candidate had a different gig: instead of drinking and smoking like the rest of America (he claims to have had “one sip” of beer and one drag of a cigarette his entire life, a number we don’t dispute), he would remain perfectly sober and put on a police uniform and pull people over.

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For The Older People And The Kids

✰ Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’: The deeper problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of secrecy. In contrast, understanding privacy as a plurality of related issues demonstrates that the disclosure of bad things is just one among many difficulties caused by government security measures. To return to my discussion of literary metaphors, the problems are not just Orwellian but Kafkaesque. Government information-gathering programs are problematic even if no information that people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem is not inhibited behavior but rather a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system’s use of personal data and its denial to the protagonist of any knowledge of or participation in the process. The harms are bureaucratic ones—indifference, error, abuse, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability.
✰ Pure ecstasy can be ‘safe’ for adults, health official says: B.C.’s top health official says taking pure ecstasy can be “safe” when consumed responsibly by adults, but he says he is not advocating legalized recreational use of the drug. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall says while the pure form of the drug has been proven safe in controlled clinical trials by psychiatrists, the type of ecstasy sold on the street is laced with potentially dangerous impurities.
✰ Why Are Twinkies Cheaper Than Carrots?: Next week, the U.S. Senate will begin floor debate on the 2012 Farm Bill, which lays the groundwork for nearly $1 trillion in U.S. government spending over the next decade. Most of that spending goes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP — still sometimes referred to as food stamps), and to subsidies and incentives for farmers. Efforts to restrict SNAP spending to healthier foods have been fought bitterly, and successfully, by the junk food lobbies. Meanwhile, the current Senate proposal would give tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Agribusiness, but would give next to nothing to programs benefiting the environment, organic food, nutrition, or small farmers. The food blog Civil Eats calls the proposal an “all-you-can-eat-buffet for the subsidy lobby.”
✰ Murder alleged after drug lab blast in Livermore: A man and woman who were critically burned in an explosion in Livermore were arrested Thursday on suspicion of murdering a third person who died in the blast, after authorities determined the three had been making hashish oil in an apartment. The explosion occurred on May 21, 2011 at 3624 Silver Oaks Way. It killed Paul Lom, 35, of San Jose, while critically injuring Lexie Miriyah Hutson, 23, who lived in the unventilated apartment, and her boyfriend, Evan Aviles, 22. An investigation determined that all three had been making hashish oil, a controlled substance, said police Sgt. John Hurd. The group had been using liquid butane, which is highly flammable, to extract the oil, Hurd said, and allowed an unknown amount of butane to pool on the floor. Hutson and Aviles were each booked Thursday on suspicion of murder and manufacturing a controlled substance. Both lost parts of their fingers and were severely burned as a result of the explosion, which left the structure uninhabitable.
✰ Family Claims Man Shot By Police Was Handcuffed: SELLERSVILLE, Pa. – The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office is now investigating Saturday’s shooting of a 26-year-old man during a confrontation with Perkasie police. Michael Marino was shot to death by an officer after he started acting strangely, cursing out neighbors and struggling violently with police. Friends and family claim Marino was unarmed and handcuffed at the time. The district attorney won’t comment further. Neighbors who saw Marino say they knew something was wrong. The three officers involved in the arrest are on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
✰ Why the U.S. Media Barely Covered Brutal Right-Wing Race Riots in Tel Aviv: Several weeks back, Israel was rocked by a night of right-wing race-riots targeting African refugees in Tel Aviv. The thuggery was frightening – refugees were attacked, African-owned businesses and stores were vandalized and a community was forced to hunker down behind closed doors in fear for their lives. Perhaps more disturbing still was that the riots, which began with an anti-immigrant demonstration, were incited by Israeli politicians representing the increasingly influential hard-right. They fired up the crowd, calling the refugees “infiltrators,” and a “cancer,” and accusing them of violence and rape. It was a classic example of “othering” – eliminationist rhetoric that led directly to action by the xenophobic crowd.
✰ Parents Sue School Over Forced Shower: The complaint states that West berated and harassed the 8-year-old, third-grade younger brothers on Nov. 15. The parents claim West told the child he “smelled badly, was dirty and that he had bad hygiene,” and took him to see Van Rite. They both told the child to disrobe and take a shower in their presence and while another student was in the nurse’s office, the parents say. “While P.T. objecting to completely disrobing and taking a shower, defendants West and Van Rite forced P.T. to remove his clothing and began violently washing his body with a washcloth, scrubbing him over a large portion of his body, stuck cotton balls in his ears, all while ridiculing and harassing him about being ‘dirty,’” the complaint states. “P.T. was then forced to apply deodorant at the insistence of defendant West and Van Rite, who then told P.T. ‘if you ever come to school dirty again[,] we will strip you buck naked and throw you in the shower and scrub you down.’”
✰ Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice (Infographic) These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America: As a dad (and blogger) I’m concerned with the integrity of the news and entertainment my family and I consume every day. Who really produces, owns and airs the shows my kids are glued to every evening and which companies select the stories I read with such loyalty each morning? I’ve always advocated for critical consumption, and what could be more important than an awareness of the sources of our families’ daily info and entertainment diets? And today, most of our media is controlled by one of six companies.
✰ Swedish Left Party Chapter Wants To Make Urinating While Standing Illegal For Men: Known as a socialist and feminist organization, the party claims that seated urination is more hygienic for men — the practice decreases the likelihood of puddles and other unwanted residue forming in the stall — in addition to being better for a man’s health by more effectively emptying one’s bladder, The Local reported. But not everyone agrees. “Men scatter urine not so much during the actual urination as during the ‘shaking off’ that follows,” John Gamel, a professor at the University of Louisville, wrote while addressing the issue in 2009. “As a result, forcing men to sit while emptying their bladders will serve little purpose, since no man wants to shake himself off while remaining seated on the toilet.”
✰ FBI Seizes NAMBLA List During Search: Following his May 23 arrest, Godek waived his Miranda rights and told agents that he had been “collecting pictures of teen boys for a very long time” and preferred “boys aged 14 and older,” according to Messineo’s affidavit. Godek admitted that he masturbated to these images, and “sent such pictures” to others via e-mail. With Godek’s consent, agents searched his vehicle (in which he had been living) and located the NAMBLA membership list and “articles about the arrests of NAMBLA members.” Investigators also seized “printed child pornography images,” a digital camera containing illicit images, and an “article about methods of enticing boys into sexual activity.” The FBI affidavit does not detail why Godek was in possession of the membership list, or what, if any, role he has with the secretive organization. NAMBLA claims it is a civil rights group dedicated to ending “the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships.”
✰ Groupthink And The Elevator Experiment: Want to see how people will change to fit in? In 1962, groundbreaking social psychologist Solomon Asch teamed up with the television show Candid Camera to demonstrate how quickly a basic social norm (how people stand in an elevator) could be reversed using group conformity. Just imagine all the behaviors and beliefs you could get tricked into following, via the power of social pressure. (The elevator experiment was still effective when replicated in the present day on the University of South Florida campus.)
✰ It happens – athletes poop their pants: Exhausted and dangerously dehydrated, Moss was losing control of her body with every step. But she trudged on, pushing herself toward victory. The legs went first. A quarter mile after passing the Sizzler, Moss wobbled, then her knees buckled inward and she telescoped to the ground like a dynamited building. The moment she hit the pavement, her bowels cut loose, emptying against her will. The torrent breached her dainty, light-blue running shorts and moved down her legs, where the hot, acidic fecal matter stung her skin and the putrid stench tattooed the inside of her nostrils.
✰ Scores of N.C. inmates ‘innocent’ of gun charges, yet still imprisoned: A USA TODAY investigation, based on court records and interviews with government officials and attorneys, found more than 60 men who went to prison for violating federal gun possession laws, even though courts have since determined that it was not a federal crime for them to have a gun. Many of them don’t even know they’re innocent. The legal issues underlying their situation are complicated, and are unique to North Carolina. But the bottom line is that each of them went to prison for breaking a law that makes it a federal crime for convicted felons to possess a gun. The problem is that none of them had criminal records serious enough to make them felons under federal law. Still, the Justice Department has not attempted to identify the men, has made no effort to notify them, and, in a few cases in which the men have come forward on their own, has argued in court that they should not be released.
✰ Marx 1975 Toy Catalog: Featuring Jack Davis illustrations.
✰ The next consumerization revolution: Your personal data: You’re giving away what’s valuable about you Right now, users give away valuable information about themselves. Sometimes they get something of real value in return, but most online businesses give away worthless “value” dressed up using gamification techniques. Klout, I’m looking at you. As we see more data breaches and grosser levels of disrespect for user privacy, I suspect the public will start to realize they’re being had. And as they’ve learned they can do in other venues, they’ll take charge. The pieces are out there to create a data brokerage that pays you I fully expect to see services pop up that act as personal-data brokers, giving users a cut of the money made from their personal information — the data users explicitly choose to share, not what is gathered about them sneakily. Again, this business model has long existed, but not in a way that allows individuals to participate in the proceeds.
✰ Cop dies during 3-way sex; widow wins $3M lawsuit: A jury has awarded a Georgia woman $3 million over her husband’s heart attack, finding that his doctor should have warned the Atlanta cop against strenuous activity like the three-way sex he was having at the time he died, WXIA-TV reports. William Martinez, a 31-year-old Atlanta police officer, collapsed and died while he and a male friend were having sex with a woman who was not his wife at an Atlanta airport motel in 2009.
✰ Pervy Perp Again Busted For Sex With Teddy Bear: For the fourth time in the past two years, a Cincinnati man has been arrested for masturbating in public with the aid of a teddy bear, records show. Charles Marshall, 28, was arrested Wednesday evening after employees at a health clinic spotted him pleasuring himself in an alley. Marshall, pictured in the adjacent mug shot, was cited for disorderly conduct. Municipal Court records show that Marshall has already been convicted three times of engaging in public indecency/disorderly conduct with a teddy bear. The misdemeanor counts resulted in short jail sentences and small fines for Marshall. Marshall was first busted in February 2010 when witnesses spotted him engaged “with a teddy bear in mens bathroom” at a public library (which prompted a judge to order him to “stay away all Hamilton Co. public libraries”). He was again arrested in November 2010 and August 2011 for “masturbating w/a stuffed animal (teddy bear)” and “masturbating using a teddy bear in a public place where minors
✰ Human Microbiome Project Explores Our 100 Trillion Good Bacteria: Babies born by Caesarean section, Dr. Proctor added, start out with different microbiomes, but it is not yet known whether their microbiomes remain different after they mature. In adults, the body carries two to five pounds of bacteria, even though these cells are minuscule — one-tenth to one-hundredth the size of a human cell. The gut, in particular, is stuffed with them. “The gut is not jam-packed with food; it is jam-packed with microbes,” Dr. Proctor said. “Half of your stool is not leftover food. It is microbial biomass.” But bacteria multiply so quickly that they replenish their numbers as fast as they are excreted. The bacteria also help the immune system, Dr. Huttenhower said. The best example is in the vagina, where they secrete chemicals that can kill other bacteria and make the environment slightly acidic, which is unappealing to other microbes.
✰ Hitchhiker retracts claim he was victim of drive-by shooting: A hitchhiker, who says he is writing a memoir called Kindness in America and claimed he was victim of a drive-by shooting in Montana, admits he shot himself, according to Montana authorities.
✰ Parents arrested after police find children blindfolded and bound outside Walmart (video): A suburban Chicago couple is behind bars and their five children are in protective custody after two of them were discovered blindfolded and with their limbs bound in the parking lot of a Walmart, police said. Adolfo Gomez, 52, and Deborah Gomez, 43, of Northlake, Illinois, were arrested after police visited the store in Lawrence, Kansas on Wednesday and spotted a 5-year-old boy sitting on the ground beside a large SUV with his hands tied behind his back, his legs bound and a blindfold covering his eyes. A 7-year-old girl was found inside the vehicle, also bound and blindfolded, along with three other children, ages 12, 13 and 15, who were not restrained. Thanks Jasmine
✰ More Women Were Likely Videotaped in Sears Dressing Room, Says Lawyer: Female customers who shopped at a Sears store in North Hollywood, Calif., over the past three years may have been videotaped in the dressing rooms and restrooms, according to an attorney representing 25 women suing the retail chain. The group is suing Sears and a former maintenance worker who allegedly videotaped them from 2009 to April 2012. Michael Alder, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said an unknown number of female customers were also likely videotaped in the store during that period. “There’s a lot of people who were patrons and don’t have any idea that they’ve been videotaped,” Alder said.
✰ Furry Child: Chinese Girl’s Body Covered by Black Spots & Fur: 6-year-old Lili of Liuchang village of Qingzhen county city in Guizhou province, the left side of her face covered with black fur, with large and small black spots all over her body. When she was 2 years old, her mother left the family never to return, her father took her to a childcare nursery and disappeared without a trace, and it was kind-hearted distant relative Liu Mingying who brought her back from Guiyang to the village. She has now reached school age and though the school is right in front of her home, attending school is still something unattainable for Lili. Qianzhong Morning News/CFP Lili was born with these black spots, and when she was two years old, her mother could no longer stand this “fur child”, and in her frustration abandoned Lili, never to return. Her father, who had been working long-term in Guiyang brought her to a children’s nursery, and never reappeared.
✰ KeepTheWebOpen.com: But where can a digital citizen turn for protection against the powerful? This question lay at the heart of the fight to stop SOPA and PIPA and keep the web open. While I do not have all the answers, the remarkable cooperation we witnessed in defense of an open Internet showed me three things. First, government is flying blind, interfering and regulating without understanding even the basics. Second, we have a rare opportunity to give government marching orders on how to treat the Internet, those who use it and the innovation it supports. And third, we must get to work immediately because our opponents are not giving up.
✰ Bondage-Loving Swedish Mom Admits Building Sex Chamber In Abandoned Military Bunker: A Swedish mom has a face that is 50 shades of red ever since police came across a secret sex chamber she set up at an abandoned military bunker near the town of Nordmaling. Last Friday, two fisherman came across the old bunker and discovered what appeared to be either a garden of earthly delights complete with a silk-sheet laden bed, ropes, dildos and leather items — or a crime scene. The fishermen assumed it was a crime scene, according to Sweden’s The Local, especially since a similarly equipped dungeon was discovered in March 2011 in an abandoned farmhouse.
✰ Woman’s mouth ‘falls pregnant’ to twelve squid after biting into sea creature, scientists claim: When examined, the doctors found ‘baby cephalopods’ attached to her mouth. These are small pods, covered in a cement-like material to make them stick. Inside the pods is an ‘ejaculatory apparatus’ and sperm – with the apparatus expelling the sperm quite forcefully. After the victim of the ‘attack’ was hospitalised, doctors removed the baby cephalopods from her gums, tongue and cheek. It was only then that the pods were formally identified as ‘squid spermatophores.’ The Center’s paper says: ‘She did not swallow the portion, but spat it out immediately. She complained of a pricking and foreign-body sensation in the oral cavity. ‘Twelve small, white spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms stuck in the mucous membrane of the tongue, cheek, and gingiva [gums] were completely removed, along with the affected mucosa. ‘On the basis of their morphology and the presence of the sperm bag, the foreign bodies were identified as squid spermatophores.’
✰ He rigged his rig to beat toll: Now you see it, now you don’t. A Queens truck driver took a move from the magician’s playbook, making his license plate seemingly disappear as he drove through a toll plaza without paying the $40 fee, the Port Authority said Wednesday. Orlando Payano’s tractor-trailer had a cable running from the license plate to the dashboard cigarette lighter when PA police stopped it recently on the Staten Island side of the Goethals Bridge, authority spokesman Steve Coleman said
✰ Conspiracy Of Silence [Video]: Conspiracy of Silence is a powerful, disturbing documentary revealing a U.S. child sex abuse and pedophilia ring that leads to the highest levels of government. Featuring intrepid investigator John DeCamp, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and 16-year Nebraska state senator, Conspiracy of Silence reveals how rogue elements at all levels of government have been involved in systematic child sex abuse and pedophilia to feed the base desires of key politicians. Based on DeCamp’s riveting book, The Franklin Cover-up, Conspiracy of Silence begins with the shut-down of Nebraska’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union after a raid by federal agencies in 1988 revealed that $40 million was missing. When the Nebraska legislature launched a probe into the affair, what initially looked like a financial swindle soon exploded into a startling tale of drugs, money laundering, and a nationwide child sex abuse ring. Nineteen months later, the legislative committee’s chief investigator died suddenly
✰ You know it’s an election year when… Barack Obama honors Israeli president with Medal of Freedom: US President Barack Obama has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Israeli President Shimon Peres, the man who has overseen the killing of Palestinian women and children by Israeli forces in the occupied territories for decades.
✰ Jesse Ventura Explains Why Governments Are Like Gangs: “When you vote, you’re essentially choosing gang members — do you want the Crips to lead or the Bloods?” Ventura says, noting that the Bloods’ colors are red, like the Republicans, and the Crips’ color is blue, like the Democrats.
✰ Top 10 Most Incredible Prison Escapes: Every year, thousands of inmates escape from prisons around the world. Of these, most just walk away from minimum-security corrections facilities, but other inmates implement complex, ingenious, and often violent schemes in order to make their getaway. Whether the work of notorious outlaws, WWII G.I.s, or 18th century writers, the following are the top 10 most incredible prison escapes.
✰ Police: ‘Forest Boy’ story is a hoax: The story of the so-called Forest Boy — a riddle that has perplexed people in Germany and elsewhere for months — is a lie, police in Germany said Friday. The 20-year-old hoaxer, who claimed he was 17 and lived in the German woods for five years, is actually from Hengelo, in the Netherlands. He never lived in the forest and made his way to Berlin some time last year, police said. He had been declared missing in September when he was 19. But because he was an adult and could determine where he wanted to live, there was no further investigation by Dutch authorities, police in Germany said. Police say the man has admitted his story is a lie and confirmed his identity. He will have to leave a Berlin city youth home since he is not under age.
✰ NPIEE: The North Pole Inner Earth Expedition: The science is real. The story is more than 5,000 years old. The legend says that at a certain place above the Arctic Circle, there exists an oceanic depression or an entrance into the Earth. It’s a place where the maritime legend claims sea level isn’t level anymore. The discovery that the earth is hollow would forever shatter our long-held beliefs about how planets are formed. More importantly, however, discovering life beneath the earth’s crust could potentially provide us with new tools that would allow life on the surface to regain environmental balance, harmony, and possibly even peace. These prospects make the North Pole Inner Earth Expedition the greatest expedition in the history of the world.
✰ Living Stem Cells Discovered in 17-Day-Old Human Corpses: The cadavers in question had been kept at 39 degrees F (4 degrees C) to keep from rotting. The stem cells the researchers isolated give rise to skeletal muscle, the kind connected to the bones, as opposed to the kind in the heart or other internal organs. [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond] Apparently the stem cells were able survive in the total absence of oxygen. “These cells are so resistant to extreme and deleterious conditions that they stay alive up to 17 days after death,” Chrétien said. The researchers also recovered viable stem cellsfrom mice 14 days after death. These cells appeared to function properly after they were transplanted into living mice, helping regenerate damaged tissues.
✰ Officials investigating possible lungs found on South L.A. sidewalk: L.A. NOW Southern California — this just in Los Angeles County officials are investigating what appeared to be a pair of lungs found on a sidewalk in unincorporated South Los Angeles. A citizen called to report what she thought were the organs about 8:30 p.m. Sunday in the 13100 block of Avalon Boulevard, said Sgt. Robert Dean of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Deputies responded and called the coroner’s office to the scene. Additional testing will be done to determine if the remains are in fact lungs and whether they are human, Dean said. “We don’t know what they are,” Dean said. “It’s really weird.”
✰ Tennessee’s deadbeat dads: The three men who have 81 children by 46 different women… and they’re not paying child support to any of them: Three men in Tennessee have notched up a staggering 78 children by 46 different women between them – and are doing their best to squirm out of paying for a single one. Terry Turnage has 23 children with 17 different women, while Richard M. Colbert has 25 children with 18 women. But Desmond Hatchett takes the record with 30 children with 11 women. On rare occasions, they pay a few dollars to the long-suffering mothers but mostly leave the state to pick up the slack – while one eludes his responsibilities altogether thanks to a stint in prison. The latest deadbeat dad to emerge from the state is Turnage, who was summoned before a judge over child support payments for his 23 kids by 17 different women – but didn’t show up to court.
✰ Woman accused of castrating man with bare hands: Police in Shelby say they arrested a woman over the weekend after she squeezed a man’s testicles out of his scrotum. Joyce Maxine Gregory, 35, is charged with malicious castration and assault inflicting serious bodily injury, according to Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford. Police say Gregory got into an argument with an older man Saturday morning. When he went outside to call 911 she followed him and grabbed his scrotum.
✰ What Does It Mean To Be Cool? It May Not Be What You Think: “James Dean is no longer the epitome of cool,” Dar-Nimrod said. “The much darker version of what coolness is still there, but it is not the main focus. The main thing is: Do I like this person? Is this person nice to people, attractive, confident and successful? That’s cool today, at least among young mainstream individuals.”