In the News

[Tomas]

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US to trade gold reserves for cash

Treasury Dept: America needs quick cash now

Video> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JPcimrnXGA

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

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US to trade gold reserves for cash

Treasury Dept: America needs quick cash now

Video> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JPcimrnXGA

Here's an example of why I've gotten slow about clicking on your posts. Not that it isn't funny, but that this belonged in the BOZO thread.

[Tomas]

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US to trade gold reserves for cash

Treasury Dept: America needs quick cash now

Video> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JPcimrnXGA

Here's an example of why I've gotten slow about clicking on your posts. Not that it isn't funny, but that this belonged in the BOZO thread.

Thanks for the input, perhaps it's time for me to take a hiatus from this blog.

PS - Guess you didn't understand the dark undertone conveyed in the video...

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I caught it. I understand dark humor.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Cyclone Power Technologies Responds to Rumors about Flesh Eating Military Robot

We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission

[Tomas]

I caught it. I understand dark humor.

No, nothing to do with humor.

[Carl G]

Afghan blast kills 4 GIs in deadliest month for US

KABUL – A roadside bomb killed four American troops in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, driving the July death toll for U.S. forces to the highest monthly level of the war.

The latest deaths brought to at least 30 the number of American service members who have died in Afghanistan this month — two more than the figure for all of June 2008, which had been the deadliest month for the U.S. since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power.

[Carl G]

Two new Mozart works discovered

VIENNA (Reuters) – The International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, Austria, said it had discovered two new works by Mozart. Details of the two pieces written for the piano will be revealed at a press conference on August 2.

[Carl G]

This from Canada Free Press.

Canada, where they know a thing or two about public health care.

Democrats Ensure Illegal Aliens Included in ObamaCare

The Heller Amendment—which would have removed from ObamaCare those who have entered and are living in the USA illegally—has been defeated 26-15 (along straight Party lines) by the Democrat controlled House Ways and Means Committee. So, along with all of their other “break-the-bank-and-everything-else” programs, our Usurper and Dictator in Chief Obama and his Democrat minions are demanding that we US citizens pay for illegals. Note: Another interesting datum included in the Socio-fascist ObamaCare package is that US citizens wanting to keep their current health insurance will be fined approximately $2,500/year. But, Obama’s illegals will NOT be penalized a penny.

More atrocities pointed out in the article. Have a look.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Japan's "herbivore" men shun corporate life, sex

[Tomas]

Japan's "herbivore" men shun corporate life, sex

I'd guess these folks haven't had much of a life outside big cities. Being raised as a country boy, there was time to explore other facets of life than the humdrum hurry of big city/bright lights escapism. However, being involved in the political arena for 20 years and then, doing an about face, the prospect of life (again) in the fast lane wouldn't be an appealingly forget-me-not.

Giving up sex is for losers... Waking up alone and turning in at night alone .. is a non-starter :-(

[Carl G]

Giving up sex is for losers... Waking up alone and turning in at night alone .. is a non-starter :-(

_________________
GODFATHERS OF PHILOSOPHY ~ QRS

So, the "GODFATHERS OF PHILOSOPHY" are losers, and the philosophy of Genius Forum is a "non-starter"?

[Tomas]

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The Internet Public Library

Online newspapers from around the world

http://www.ipl.org/div/news


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[Carl G]

U.S.Industrial Capacity Use Hits Record Low

The nation’s industries used only 68.3 percent of available capacity, according to a monthly report from the Federal Reserve. Prior to the current recession, the lowest rate since the Fed started this series of records in 1967 was 70.9 percent in December 1982. Since February this year, the rate of capacity utilization has been below that mark.

[Robert]

John Walker Lindh's Parents Discuss Their Son's Story, from Joining the US-Backed Taliban Army to Surviving a Northern Alliance Massacre, to His Abuse at the Hands of US Forces

Democracy Now

In their first extended interview, the parents of John Walker Lindh, Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh, join us for the hour to tell their son’s story. He was born in Washington, DC in 1981. At the age of sixteen, he converted to Islam. In 1999, Lindh left the United States for Yemen to study Arabic and the Koran. He later traveled to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan, before 9/11, where he received military training from the US-backed, Taliban-run Afghan Army to fight against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan’s civil war. He was captured in late 2001, found emaciated and wounded, one of the few to survive a massacre by the Northern Alliance. To his parents’ relief, he was handed to US forces, but they brutalized him, as well. Donald Rumsfeld had ordered them to “take the gloves off.” He was designated Detainee 001 in the war on terror. When he returned to the United States in January 2002, he was being held as a prisoner accused of conspiring to kill Americans. As part of a plea deal, Lindh pleaded guilty to serving in the Taliban army and carrying weapons and was given a twenty-year sentence.

[Carl G]

Half of all the fruit & veg you buy is contaminated

ALMOST HALF of the fresh fruit and veg sold across the UK is contaminated with toxic pesticides, according to the latest scientific surveys for the government.

Nearly every orange, 94% of pineapples and 90% of pears sampled were laced with traces of chemicals used to kill bugs. High proportions of apples, grapes and tomatoes were also tainted, as were parsnips, melons and cucumbers.

Alarmingly, as much as a quarter of the food on sale in 2008 - the date of the latest figures - was found to contain multiple pesticides. In some cases, up to ten different chemicals were detected in a single sample.
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Experts warn that the "cocktail effect" of so many different chemicals endangers health. They also point out that some of the pesticides are not only cancer-causing but also so-called "gender-benders" - chemicals that disrupt human sexuality.

I imagine the same is true in most other "developed" countries.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Diary of Georde Sodini, 'gym shooter' (pdf).

"I will try not to add anymore entries because this computer clicking distracts me".

To me it seems he was constantly lost in distraction until he finally got absorbed by the biggest of them: death.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

John Walker Lindh's Parents Discuss Their Son's Story, from Joining the US-Backed Taliban Army to Surviving a Northern Alliance Massacre, to His Abuse at the Hands of US Forces

Democracy Now

In their first extended interview, the parents of John Walker Lindh, Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh, join us for the hour to tell their son’s story. He was born in Washington, DC in 1981. At the age of sixteen, he converted to Islam. In 1999, Lindh left the United States for Yemen to study Arabic and the Koran. He later traveled to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan, before 9/11, where he received military training from the US-backed, Taliban-run Afghan Army to fight against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan’s civil war. He was captured in late 2001, found emaciated and wounded, one of the few to survive a massacre by the Northern Alliance. To his parents’ relief, he was handed to US forces, but they brutalized him, as well. Donald Rumsfeld had ordered them to “take the gloves off.” He was designated Detainee 001 in the war on terror. When he returned to the United States in January 2002, he was being held as a prisoner accused of conspiring to kill Americans. As part of a plea deal, Lindh pleaded guilty to serving in the Taliban army and carrying weapons and was given a twenty-year sentence.

Freedom of religion in America - free to be any kind of Christian you want to be.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Human facial expressions aren't universal

An eye-tracking tool and software indicated that while Caucasians tended to look at all parts of a face equally, Asians alternated their gaze between the left and right eyes. (...) Differences in the interpretation of facial expressions between Asians and Caucasians are almost certainly cultural, not genetic

This was already rather obvious just by looking at Asian cinema, especially animation. Always the eyes-only shots during emotional scenes which is rarely seen in Caucasian cinema - one always sees the face close-up especially when made-for-TV, so the mouth was always in full view as well. Perhaps we're a mouth-oriented culture here in more than one way.

[Pye]

Regarding the non-universality of facial expressions from Diebert above . . . . I remember my surprise to learn while studying feral children that laughter was entirely absent from their repertoire of behaviours. Laughter is one of those things that humans prize as belonging to them by nature (hence, irrepressible by any concrete circumstances). Clearly, it's not true. Laughter is a learned response and requires the gestalt of more-than-one human to come about. Love - seriously prized by the socialized human - was also non-manifested in these children. In the few sane settings in which feral children have been observed, any outward appearance of what might be considered the manifestations of "love" were interpreted in the sharper light of pure need. The appearance of pleasure - upon seeing a human caretaker - was interpreted as an immediate need for the food or protection they could provide, and not as the 'selfless' sense of pure feeling we often associate with human love. This, I think, however, is not news to many of the posters here . . .

Diebert writes: Perhaps we're a mouth-oriented culture here in more than one way.

Speaking of laughter, this gave me a good bark, Diebert (:D)

In The Blue Planet (BBC underwater nature series), there is a creature that is by and large simply a mouth and an anus. I have a friend with whom this thought seems to tickle some holy laughter between us - for its great existential concretism.

There is also a Zen teacher (whose name escapes me at the moment) who put a tremendous amount of focus upon the mouth in his teachings. Not that we be reduced, so to speak, to the mouth-anus reality, but that we focus upon the mouth and all its doings in order to stop focusing upon the mouth and all its doings. Too much eating; too much prattling, arguing, abstracting, confessing, gossiping, etc.; big hungry endless mouths of desire . . . .

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Religion is not the primary motivation of suicide bombers

To explain suicide attacks, understanding the terrorist organization’s logic is more important than understanding individual motivations. (...) Humiliation, revenge and altruism appear to play a key role at the organizational and individual levels in shaping the subculture that promotes suicide bombings.

Suicide bombing falls into the category of altruistic suicidal actions that involve valuing one’s life as less worthy than that of the group’s honor, religion, or some other collective interest.

Religiously and nationalistically coded attitudes toward acceptance of death, stemming from long periods of collective suffering, humiliation and powerlessness, enable political organizations to offer suicide bombings as an outlet for their people’s feelings of desperation, deprivation, hostility and injustice.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The ego epidemic: How more and more of women have an inflated sense of their own fabulousness

Psychology professors Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell analysed studies on 37,000 college students in 2006.

[Tomas]

this particular process of regulating gene activity, otherwise known as epigenetics, can be reversed—unlike actual mutations in DNA. We see here, through a proof-of-principal demonstration, that elements of aging can be reversed

So instead of aging when people get older, humans can just get more mutated. That leaves lots of possibilities open for the offspring of humans that have been mutating for a few centuries.

Your parents may largely dictate how long you're going to live. And your mom appears to have most of the control over your aging gene.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Mad Genius: Study Suggests Link Between Psychosis and Creativity

He observes that “molecular factors that are loosely associated with severe mental disorders but are present in many healthy people may have an advantage enabling us to think more creatively.” In addition, these findings suggest that certain genetic variations, even though associated with adverse health problems, may survive evolutionary selection and remain in a population’s gene pool if they also have beneficial effects.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Better sex linked to good health for women

Women who rated themselves as fulfilled in the bedroom also had better scores for "positive wellbeing" and "vitality" according to research in Australia.

Naturally, but how to be sure "better sex" isn't just a result of positive sense of being, health and vitality? Aren't those some of the selectors in the first place? Or least the source of the needed potential; the excitability and excitement.