hot topics // Current

500,000 coffins, Shock Doctrine, Martial Law, Concentration Camps!

I don't know what to think of all this... just do a search on Martial Law, its crazy... more

Cher214
added this
1 year ago
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6 comments

Hidden Details of the Senate-OK'd Bailout

So I read through the 400page bill that just passed and man this is sketchy as HECK.... more

kadugen
added this
1 year ago
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2 comments

New hypersonic missile to be 'uninterceptable'

A joint Russian-Indian company has started the development of a cruise missile capable... more

kadugen
added this
1 year ago
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1 comment

Bailout by Stealth

The media is falling all over itself to report on every minutiae of the so-called Wall... more

kadugen
added this
1 year ago
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8 comments

Bill Maher's view of Palin and the election

Bill Maher on Conan (9.30.8). I'll let the video speak for itself. Funny, yet very... more

WebBeard
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1 year ago
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4 comments

Bells Ring for First U.S. Carbon Auction

RGGI in effect. Make the polluter pay.

WebBeard
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1 year ago
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0 comments

Failed Bailout Bill: Final Vote Results for Roll Call

AYES: Democratic: 140, Republican: 65, TOTAL: 205 NOES: Democratic: 95, Republican:... more

kadugen
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1 year ago
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2 comments

Death By Gunfire in Hampton Roads Virginia

Chesapeake Virginia-The threat against ordinary citizens within the 7 cities is at an... more

bmltv
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1 year ago
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1 comment

CONSUMING NATURE-The Biodiversity Crisis-Part 1

Biodiversity. The sum total of all life on Earth. That wealth of genes,... more

bmltv
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1 year ago
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2 comments

THE X-RATED GRANDMA - When I Started Stripping

I love Opal....how many people have the balls, let alone a senior citizen, to sit in... more

dixiefilms
added this
1 year ago
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1 comment

PAUL NEWMAN Dies at 83

This is so sad...I loved Paul, and have admired his work for over 30 years. And have... more

dixiefilms
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1 year ago
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0 comments

The Topic of the Week 9/26/08

picture: Flickr photo- Cherry ice-cream... more

dcuisinot
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1 year ago
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5 comments

THE ACCEPTABLE SIN

A 60-something liberal woman in the Bible Belt shares her thoughts on Obesity and... more

dixiefilms
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1 year ago
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4 comments

Designers developing virtual-reality 'Cocoon'

You're walking along a street in Roman Pompeii at the start of the first millennium when you notice a spectacular stone building. You reach out towards it and your guide informs you it's a temple to the god Jupiter, built in 200 BC. With a flick of your wrist you save the data and, school assignment complete, you step out of your Cocoon and back into your living room.

Educational historical journeys are just one possible use of the Immersive Cocoon, a walk-in virtual-reality pod being developed by NAU, an international design collective that aims to revolutionize the way we interact with computers.

When complete, the Immersive Cocoon will be a sleek and shiny human-sized dome. Step inside and you'll be enveloped by a 360° display screen and full surround sound.

When the software boots up, instead of using a joystick or mouse to navigate the screens, motion-tracking cameras will follow the movement of your arms, legs and face, and a motion-sensitive platform will detect if you're walking or jumping.

"You've got display, sound and interaction all combined to create this fully immersed digital experience," explains Tino Schaedler, the architect-turned-film designer who is one third of NAU.

"It is completely different from me sitting in front of a screen, looking at a little picture and typing something in -- almost like the experience is reduced to my brain and my fingers. In the Cocoon we have the whole body immersed inside."

Videogame players will immediately recognize the Cocoon's gaming potential. The motion-tracking cameras and wrap-around visuals could make for an incredibly realistic gaming experience, where you use your whole body to fight off enemies who approach from all directions. But the Cocoon's potential extends far beyond gaming.

Imagine having a Cocoon in your home, connected to the Internet. Its unique interface means that rather than inputing commands with a keyboard or a moving a cursor with a mouse, you can simply reach out and 'grab' information from all around you.

If that sounds like science fiction, it may be because the 3D motion-tracking system was originally developed by John Underkoffler, whose work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology inspired similar 'reach out and grab' technology in the sci-fi movie "Minority Report."

... continue readingYou're walking along a street in Roman Pompeii at the start of the first millennium... more

unk_derek
added this
1 year ago
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0 comments

Planet is running out of clean water, new film warns

One sixth of the world's population does not have access to clean drinking water. More... more

unk_derek
added this
1 year ago
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2 comments

How 6,700 tons of radioactive sand from Kuwait ended up in Idaho?

How 6,700 Tons of Radioactive Sand from Kuwait Ended Up in Idaho
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
Posted on September 17, 2008, Printed on September 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98950/

On April 26, 2008, the BBC Alabama arrived in Longview, Wash., carrying 6,700 tons of Kuwaiti sand. The sand had become contaminated with depleted uranium when U.S. military vehicles and munitions caught fire at Doha Army base in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. The depleted uranium was being repatriated. The sand was a gift of the Kuwaiti government.

So was the cost of repatriation. Neither government will discuss just how much the tab was.

The Longview Daily News reported that Mike Wilcox, vice president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union Local 21, initially had been "concerned about the safety of longshoremen and the entire community when he heard a shipment of depleted uranium was coming into Longview."

But the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that the sand contained "unimportant quantities" of radioactive material, and officials from the Department of Health would be available to test radiation levels -- just in case any of the sand spilled.

At the last minute, the Army notified port authorities that tests had revealed that the sand was also contaminated with lead -- in fact, four times more lead than the EPA's limit for hazardous materials. Transshipment was delayed for a few days awaiting a green light from the EPA.

Wilcox told the Daily News that he hoped the delivery would be a one-time thing.

Over the next month, longshoremen loaded 160 containers onto railcars bound for an Idaho-based waste disposal site owned by a company called American Ecology. When the sand arrived at the Idaho site, the company did its own tests and, as Chad Hyslop, project director for American Ecology, told the Daily News, "found no hazardous levels of lead."

Doug Rokke, who quit his job directing the cleanup of radioactive battlefields for the Army, contacted American Ecology and discovered "that they had absolutely no knowledge of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48, U.S. Army PAM 700-48, U.S. Army Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, and all of the medical orders dealing with depleted uranium contamination, environmental remediation procedures, safety and medical care."

Hazardous materials storage has become a lucrative and growing business, especially since Donald Rumsfeld began implementing his plans for a sleek new "global cavalry" capable of swift and lethal response from strategically placed "frontier stockades" to punish bad guys whenever and wherever they have been bad. According to the Pentagon's annual "Base Structure Report," which itemizes its foreign and domestic military real estate, the Department of Defense currently operates more than 800 such bases around the world; 5,311 if you count the ones in American territories and on the U.S. mainland; probably well over 6,000 if you count the ones, like Doha in Kuwait, that for some reason didn't make the list. (Similarly omitted are all U.S. bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Uzbekistan.)
How 6,700 Tons of Radioactive Sand from Kuwait Ended Up in Idaho By Penny Coleman,... more

synclaire
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1 year ago
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10 comments

THE ACCEPTABLE SIN on Youtube - Obesity and Religion

We love this new little 5 minute short film! Why can't anyone see the direct link... more

dixiefilms
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1 year ago
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3 comments

Found after 300m years: rainforest fossils show how climate change could look

A series of fossilised forests the size of small cities have provided prehistoric... more

Crazyotto
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1 year ago
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1 comment

We Agree

The Republican/Democrat duopoly has, for far too long, ignored the most important issues facing our nation. However, alternate candidates Chuck Baldwin, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader agree with Ron Paul on four key principles central to the health of our nation. These principles should be key in the considerations of every voter this November and in every election.

We Agree

Foreign Policy: The Iraq War must end as quickly as possible with removal of all our soldiers from the region. We must initiate the return of our soldiers from around the world, including Korea, Japan, Europe and the entire Middle East. We must cease the war propaganda, threats of a blockade and plans for attacks on Iran, nor should we re-ignite the cold war with Russia over Georgia. We must be willing to talk to all countries and offer friendship and trade and travel to all who are willing. We must take off the table the threat of a nuclear first strike against all nations.

Privacy: We must protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons under US jurisdiction. We must repeal or radically change the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the FISA legislation. We must reject the notion and practice of torture, eliminations of habeas corpus, secret tribunals, and secret prisons. We must deny immunity for corporations that spy willingly on the people for the benefit of the government. We must reject the unitary presidency, the illegal use of signing statements and excessive use of executive orders.

The National Debt: We believe that there should be no increase in the national debt. The burden of debt placed on the next generation is unjust and already threatening our economy and the value of our dollar. We must pay our bills as we go along and not unfairly place this burden on a future generation.

The Federal Reserve: We seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking, corporate, and other financial institutions. The arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests must be ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no corporate subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for their crimes and frauds.The Republican/Democrat duopoly has, for far too long, ignored the most important... more

kadugen
added this
1 year ago
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9 comments

Jason and the secret climate change war

A shadowy scientific elite codenamed Jason warned the US about global warming 30 years ago but was sidelined for political convenience.

Today the scientific argument about the broad principles of what we are doing to the Earth’s climate is over. By releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere we are warming the world.

Since the early 1990s there has been a furious debate about global warming. So-called climate change “sceptics” have spent years disputing almost every aspect of the scientific consensus on the subject. Their arguments have successfully delayed significant political action to deal with greenhouse gas emissions. Recent research reveals how the roots of this argument stretch back to two hugely influential reports written almost 30 years ago.

These reports involve a secret organisation of American scientists reporting to the US Department of Defense. At the highest levels of the American government, officials pondered whether global warming was a significant new threat to civilisation. They turned for advice to the elite special forces of the scientific world – a shadowy organisation known as Jason. Even today few people have heard of Jason. It was established in 1960 at the height of the cold war when a group of physicists who had helped to develop the atomic bomb proposed a new organisation that would – to quote one of its founders – “inject new ideas into national defence”.

So the Jasons (as they style themselves) were born; a self-selected group of brilliant minds free to think the unthinkable in the knowledge that their work was classified. Membership was by invitation only and they are indeed the cream. Of the roughly 100 Jasons over the years, 11 have won Nobel prizes and 43 have been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.

For years, being a Jason was just about the best job going in American science. Every summer the Jasons all moved to San Diego in California to devote six weeks to working together. They were paid well and rented houses by the beach. The kids surfed while their dads saved the world. Less James Bond, more Club Med.

Today the Jasons still meet in San Diego in a quaint postwar construction with more than a hint of Thunderbirds about it. In 1977 they got to work on global warming. There was one potential problem. Only a few of them knew anything about climatology. To get a better understanding they relocated for a few days to Boulder, Colorado, the base for NCAR – the National Center for Atmospheric Research – where they heard the latest information on climate change. Then, being physicists, they went back to first principles and decided to build a model of the climate system. Officially it was called Features of Energy-Budget Climate Models: An Example of Weather-Driven Climate Stability, but it was dubbed the Jason Model of the World.

In 1979 they produced their report: coded JSR-78-07 and entitled The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate. Now, with the benefit of hind-sight, it is remarkable how prescient it was.

********************CONTINUES*********************A shadowy scientific elite codenamed Jason warned the US about global warming 30 years... more

goldenways
added this
1 year ago
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26 comments

tagged w/ hot topics

500,000 coffins, Shock Doctrine, Martial Law, Concentration Camps!

Hidden Details of the Senate-OK'd Bailout

New hypersonic missile to be 'uninterceptable'

Bailout by Stealth

Bill Maher's view of Palin and the election

Bells Ring for First U.S. Carbon Auction

Failed Bailout Bill: Final Vote Results for Roll Call

Death By Gunfire in Hampton Roads Virginia

CONSUMING NATURE-The Biodiversity Crisis-Part 1

THE X-RATED GRANDMA - When I Started Stripping

PAUL NEWMAN Dies at 83

The Topic of the Week 9/26/08

THE ACCEPTABLE SIN

Designers developing virtual-reality 'Cocoon'

Planet is running out of clean water, new film warns

How 6,700 tons of radioactive sand from Kuwait ended up in Idaho?

THE ACCEPTABLE SIN on Youtube - Obesity and Religion

Found after 300m years: rainforest fossils show how climate change could look

We Agree

Jason and the secret climate change war

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