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An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion. As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here’s why: http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/43029-why-iceland-should-be-in-the-news-but-is-notAn Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a... more
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The Gibbets claim to make lava rock, whatever that means. The members are: Antoine Gibbet: singer and lyricist, Fat Baby Ralph: guitars, Poplar Gibbet: drums, programming, and synthetics... Playground is their first set of recordings as a unit of collaboration. Please enjoy! http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/rock/26441-the-gibbetsThe Gibbets claim to make lava rock, whatever that means. The members are: Antoine... more
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While Jean-Luc Godard’s life and work has received a plethora of critical attention, a relatively uncharted episode occurred in 1977–1978, when, at the behest of the Samora Machel government, the filmmaker worked in Mozambique to assist in the establishment of the country’s first television station. Having newly acquired its independence from Portugal, the avowedly Marxist government of Machel embarked on a cultural policy emphasizing the country’s autonomy and intending to avoid simply replicating the media landscape of First World countries. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/section-blog/16527-birth-of-the-image-of-a-nation-jean-luc-godard-in-mozambiqueWhile Jean-Luc Godard’s life and work has received a plethora of critical... more
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Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan that can revert to the sexually immature (polyp stage) after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation. This cycle can repeat indefinitely tha offers it biologically immortal. It is not clear if stem cells are involved in this immortality or not. Upto now, there is little academic report in the Turristopsis nutricula studies. To study the mechanism of the biological immortality of Turritopsis nutricula possibly supplies the way finding the biological immortality for human. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/14425-turritopsis-nutricula-study-of-biologically-immortal-species-of-jellyfishTurritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan that can revert to the sexually immature (polyp... more
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Just make sure not to do something that might make Facebook angry. Otherwise it might nuke every link to your site, choking off this river of traffic that you’ve worked so hard to build. That’s the message Facebook sent today with its censorship of links to Lamebook, a humor site that posts lewd conversations spotted on the social network. Facebook has confirmed that it is automatically blocking all links to Lamebook and that it has also removed the company’s ‘Fan’ page. Not because the content was offensive, mind you, but because Facebook doesn’t like Lamebook. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/13871-make-facebook-angryJust make sure not to do something that might make Facebook angry. Otherwise it might... more
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Spaced-out adolescents in headphones litter YouTube, some panting and others wincing as they listen to droning, pulsating soundtracks known as iDoses. hey have fallen victim to an insidious new digital drug culture that preys on vulnerable young teens with money to burn. ith nothing but an mp3 player and an internet account they can can legally download 'binaural' audio downloads that claim to deliver a “high” that can mimic drugs like LSD and Crystal Meth. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/11915--i-dosing-or-digital-drugSpaced-out adolescents in headphones litter YouTube, some panting and others wincing... more
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It may look like any average building but behind closed doors could lie the answer to safe renewable energy of the future. Here at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore California, scientists are aiming to build the world's first sustainable fusion reactor by 'creating a miniature star on Earth'. Following a series of key experiments over the last few weeks, the £2.2 billion project has inched a little closer to its goal of igniting a workable fusion reaction by 2012. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/11685-creating-a-miniature-star-on-earthIt may look like any average building but behind closed doors could lie the answer to... more
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Jeremy Mayer spent more than 1,400 hours at the typewriter in the past year, but he wasn’t banging out a sci-fi novel. Instead, he was building Nude IV, aka Delilah — a 6-foot-tall sculpture made entirely of typewriter parts. Mayer uses vintage typewriters in his intriguing artwork, carefully taking them apart and then recombining the mechanical pieces into anthropomorphic sculptures. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/section-blog/8117-recycled-robotsJeremy Mayer spent more than 1,400 hours at the typewriter in the past year, but he... more
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Scientists in Japan have created something unusually cool in the name of research. The researchers discovered a way to render a dead animal’s flesh and muscles completely transparent while dying their skeletal systems a variety of bright colors. The colorful skeletons are beautiful and give us a completely different look at animals we’re used to seeing.
Read more: http://www.whitespace.bz/ws/web/forms/pulse/PulseMainArticle.aspx?id=508Scientists in Japan have created something unusually cool in the name of research. The... more
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In the mid-1960’s, a young Czechoslovakian psychiatrist working at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague made some epoch-making discoveries concerning the fundamental structures of the human psyche. Working with a wide range of individuals involved in supervised LSD psychotherapy, Stanislav Grof and his clients encountered experiences that gradually and then irrevocably challenged the orthodox Freudian model in which he and his colleagues were working. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/422-archetypal-astrologyIn the mid-1960’s, a young Czechoslovakian psychiatrist working at the... more
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Every physicist is taught that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light. Yet laboratory experiments done over the last 30 years clearly show that some things appear to break this speed limit without upturning Einstein's special theory of relativity. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/405-faster-than-lightEvery physicist is taught that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed... more
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One of the key aspects of the emerging Internet of Things - where real-world objects are connected to the Internet - is the massive amount of new data on the Web that will result. As more and more "things" in the world are connected to the Internet, it follows that more data will be uploaded to and downloaded from the cloud. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/389-data-explosion-One of the key aspects of the emerging Internet of Things - where real-world objects... more
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The research, which is ongoing and was begun by Mr. Charles Moore in 1997, has revealed a deadly nightmare for organic life. There is a proven process in which any hydrocarbon-based material can be converted back to high-quality light oil by a brief application of heat and pressure... http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/372-oceans-of-plasticThe research, which is ongoing and was begun by Mr. Charles Moore in 1997, has... more
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The hole has provided astronomers with a surprising glimpse into the end of the star-forming process. Stars are born in dense clouds of dust and gas that can now be studied in unprecedented detail with Herschel. Although jets and winds of gas have been seen coming from young stars in the past, it has always been a mystery exactly how a star uses these to blow away its surroundings and emerge from its birth cloud. Now, for the first time, Herschel may be seeing an unexpected step in this process. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/362-hole-in-spaceThe hole has provided astronomers with a surprising glimpse into the end of the... more
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A mechanical music machine, built from bits of old piano and driven by computer built by third year student Felix Thorn (21) it resembles an eccentric Heath Robinson- type invention with an array of hammers, keys and dampers – all taken from an old upright piano. He has also added drums, a glockenspiel and other percussion instruments. The whole construction is connected to a computer which sends signals to set the keys in motion to create a sound, described by Felix as “a music box on drugs”. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/section-blog/334-felix-thorns-robotic-musical-machine-worlds-most-amazing-musical-robots-A mechanical music machine, built from bits of old piano and driven by computer built... more
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Oscar Janiger, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who ``turned on'' scores of artists, intellectuals and elite members of Hollywood's entertainment community, including the late Cary Grant, to the psychedelic drug LSD. From 1954 until 1962 -- four years before LSD was declared illegal - - Janiger was one of the first researchers to probe the drug's potential for enhancing intellect and creativity. He incorporated the drug into his therapy and handed it out to an estimated 1,000 volunteers including such luminaries as novelists Anais Nin and Aldous Huxley, actors Cary Grant and Jack Nicholson, and conductor/composer Andre Previn . http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/section-blog/302-lsd-effects-on-creativity-free-book-based-on-the-groundbreaking-and-controversial-research-on-lsdOscar Janiger, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who ``turned on'' scores of... more
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WASHINGTON — President Obama, making a muscular show of his executive authority just one day after Congress left for spring recess, said Saturday that he would bypass the Senate and install 15 appointees, including a union lawyer whose nomination to the National Labor Relations Board was blocked last month with the help of two Democrats.
Coming on the heels of Mr. Obama’s big victory on health care legislation, Saturday’s move suggests a newly emboldened president who is unafraid to provoke a confrontation with the minority party.
Just two days ago, all 41 Senate Republicans sent Mr. Obama a letter urging him not to appoint the union lawyer, Craig Becker, during the recess. Mr. Obama’s action, in defiance of the Republicans, was hailed by union leaders, but it also seemed certain to intensify the partisan rancor that has enveloped Washington.
“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disprove of my nominees,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.”
It was the first time the president has used his constitutional authority to fill vacant federal positions by making recess appointments, thus avoiding the requirement for the advice and consent of the Senate. Mr. Obama, who currently has 217 nominees pending and 77 awaiting action on the Senate floor, said Republicans had given him little choice.
“At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months,” Mr. Obama said. “I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.”
With lawmakers back in their home states and Mr. Obama spending a quiet family weekend at Camp David, the White House issued the statement announcing the president’s intent to appoint Mr. Becker, and 14 others, mostly to fill positions on his economic and homeland security teams.
The White House said the 15 nominees had been waiting, on average, seven months to be confirmed. They are expected to begin work over the next week; the president’s action will enable them to serve without Senate confirmation until the chamber adjourns at the end of 2011.
Republicans, who have cast Mr. Becker as a pro-labor radical, issued a flurry of angry statements. They wasted little time in reminding reporters that when George W. Bush was president, then-Senator Obama had railed against the recess appointment of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, saying that Mr. Bolton would be “damaged goods” and lacked credibility without Senate confirmation.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, called the president’s move “yet another episode of choosing a partisan path despite bipartisan opposition.”
Another Republican, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, said in an interview that he could understand Mr. Obama’s frustration; he said that most of the other nominees were noncontroversial and that his concern was centered primarily on Mr. Becker. “He has a precedent,” Mr. Coburn said of the president, “Others have done it, so I’m not critical of him doing it. But I am critical of the Becker appointment because he doesn’t have the votes.”
Recess appointments are a common tool for presidents frustrated by the confirmation process. Mr. Obama’s action puts him on a par with Mr. Bush, who had made 15 recess appointments by this point in his presidency. Mr. Bush had an especially intense tussle with Democrats over judicial appointees; during the course of his two terms in office, he made a total of 171 recess appointments, although 72 were to part-time positions, according to the Congressional Research Service. President Clinton made 139 recess appointments.
With the exception of Mr. Becker, the White House said most of the 15 nominees being installed by Mr. Obama have bipartisan support. Indeed, in a sign that Mr. Obama did not want to go too far in inflaming partisan passions, he resisted using his executive powers to install one of his most contentious candidates, Dawn Johnsen, an Indiana University law professor, to lead the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. Ms. Johnsen has drawn the ire of Republicans for her work as a lawyer for NARAL Pro-Choice America as well as her outspoken opposition to the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies.
Saturday’s announcement is certain to cheer some of Mr. Obama’s strongest supporters, who have been arguing that the president should take on Republicans in a more forceful way. Gay rights advocates were elated to see Chai R. Feldblum, a Georgetown University Law professor who advocates on gay issues, claim a spot on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a result of Mr. Obama’s action.
But perhaps no group will be as heartened as union leaders.
For months they had complained that Mr. Obama was too timid in responding to Republican opposition to Mr. Becker, a former associate general counsel for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Service Employees International Union. Labor leaders were also unhappy that the labor relations board has been largely paralyzed since January 2008 because only two of its five seats have been filled since then. Mr. Obama also appointed Mark Pearce, a New York labor lawyer, on Saturday to fill a fourth seat on the board.
Last month, the Democrats fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a threatened Republican filibuster of a vote for Mr. Becker. Two Democrats, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, joined Republicans in the 52-to-33 vote.
In their letter to the president, Republicans wrote that Mr. Becker, a former law professor at U.C.L.A. and the University of Chicago, “could not be viewed as impartial, unbiased or objective” in labor board cases. A law review article he wrote, saying that employers should not have a voice in unionization elections, angered many businesses and Republicans. But in Congressional testimony, Mr. Becker said that those were his personal views and as a labor board member, he would follow the letter of the law.
Two other candidates who are getting recess appointments, Jeffrey Goldstein, the nominee for a high-level job at the Department of Treasury as under secretary for domestic finance, and Alan D. Bersin, the nominee for commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection division of the Department of Homeland Security, were still being vetted by the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Obama’s decision to bypass the vetting drew criticism Saturday from the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.
Mr. Grassley said Mr. Goldstein was still answering the panel’s questions about his work for a private equity firm, and Mr. Bersin was answering questions about “what appeared to be conflicting information about his documentation and disclosure” of household employees — questions that, the senator said, were “directly relevant” to the positions they will hold.WASHINGTON — President Obama, making a muscular show of his executive authority... more
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The nice thing about bellowing that the insurance reform bill passed by Congress is unconstitutional — and the fruit of some kind of dastardly undemocratic process — is that, like this guy, you don’t have to trouble yourself over what’s actually in the bill, or what it will in fact do in the real world. It’s a lazy argument that’s a lot easier to make than acquainting oneself with all those dreary policy details.
Here is a bumbling Democratic lawmaker, Illinois rep. Phil Hare, getting caught in a ‘gotcha moment’ by an extraordinarily smug tea-party Constitutional scholar wannabe. Hat tip, naturally, to the similarly smug folks at Reason (actually, it’s from Radley Balko who is, in my view, their best by far).
If you can’t watch video on your computer, the gist of it this: Hare, at a meeting with constituents, is asked where in the Constitution Congress is given the authority to mandate that people by health insurance. Hare first says he wasn’t thinking about the Constitution when he voted for the bill, he was thinking about the real human suffering of the uninsured Americans in his district. The questioner, who was videotaping the exchange, pushes Hare further, and he then says that he “doesn’t care” what the Constitution says because the health care crisis is so severe for so many of his constituents.
As soon as the tea-party type asking the question hears that, he responds with all the enthusiasm of a teenager proving the teacher wrong: ‘you just said you ‘don’t care’ about the Constitution you swore to uphold!’
I have no idea why so many Democrats are such poor communicators. While Hare’s heart was in the right place, it was about the worst response one could give to a question whose premise is so utterly ridiculous.
The correct response is this: The Constitution says the legislative branch writes our nation’s laws. I’m a member of Congress, so I had a chance to help shape and eventually vote on this legislation.
The Supreme Court has long held that the federal government can regulate things that impact the national economy under the Commerce Clause. That’s in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Whatever else you might believe, everyone agrees that the health-care delivery system plays a huge role in the economy.
And if you believe that Congress can’t regulate the nation’s health-care system, then you also believe Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are all unconstitutional, and I’m sure most of the people in this room would disagree.
Now, some folks think that the Supreme Court’s rulings over the years don’t support this particular law. But I’m a member of Congress, and I don’t get to decide that anymore than you do — Article 2 of the Constitution says that the Supreme Court decides those questions.
Some state Attorneys General are suing the government on those grounds, which is the way these Constitutional questions are supposed to be worked out. But most experts believe that their legal case is very thin, and will probably lose even before a Supreme Court that now has a conservative majority. Unless the court does in fact rule in their favor, I’ll keep representing my constituents to the best of my ability.
Now, if he wanted to be smart alecky, and utterly ruin the tea partier’s entire day, he could have added:
Some of those Attorney Generals say that the government has never in the history of the Republic forced citizens to purchase goods and services from private companies. They say the founders would be rolling in their graves if they heard of such an arrangement.
Now, I don’t particularly like the fact that we’re mandating that people buy plans from the insurance companies either, and that’s why I supported the publicly administered, non-profit insurance option that the conservatives killed in order to protect their corporate patrons’ bottom lines. I’ll continue to support adding that public option in the future.
But the argument also doesn’t stand up. Back in 1792, when many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were still active participants in our government, Congress passed a law called the Second Militia Act of 1792, and it required every white male between the ages of 18 and 45 to purchase a whole laundry-list of equipment, with their own money, from private companies. George Washington was president at the time, and he signed the bill into law.
Now, because I’m lazy and he did such a good job, I’m going to reprint this entire post by Steve M. from No More Mister Nice Blog, Take it, Steve Tom [EDIT: OK, I screwed up big-time -- that was actually a guest-post written by Tom Hilton from If I Ran the Zoo -- my apologies]:
Here’s How It Works, People:
You get to vote in elections (or not vote, but that’s your choice). Elections can go either way. Sometimes your candidates win, and sometimes they lose. When your candidates lose, that doesn’t mean the results are illegitimate.
The people who do win these elections are then authorized to make decisions on your behalf, even if you didn’t vote for them. That authorization continues until they leave office.
Sometimes the winners do things you don’t like. The fact that you don’t like them doesn’t mean those things were done without your consent or representation. You gave your consent when you voted in an election, and you are represented by whoever wins. Unless you didn’t vote. In which case, you gave your consent by default.
When this happens, it isn’t an abuse of power, or unconstitutional, or tyranny. It’s the political system working in an entirely legitimate way. A way you might happen not to like, but the way it was meant to work.
Oh, and by the way? The people do not directly vote on legislation. An opinion poll is not a plebiscite. When Congress passes a bill that a majority of poll respondents oppose, that isn’t un-democratic; it’s just a different decision about what should be done, by the people whose job it is to make those decisions.
When you claim that any given result of the legislative process is illegitimate just because you don’t like it, you de-legitimize the process as a whole. Which you’re perfectly free to do, because it’s a free country, and people can say stupid things if they want to. But if you do try to de-legitimize the legislative process, you don’t get to pretend that the people who designed the process are on your side.
Got that?The nice thing about bellowing that the insurance reform bill passed by Congress is... more
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