Archive for the 'Perception Management' Category
Appeasing The Dictator, 140 Characters At A Time: Twitter Censors Content Within Russia
March 28th, 2013Via: PJ Media: If you have been following the Internet crackdown underway in Russia, you will not be surprised to learn that Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has recruited many websites — which are either terrified of his wrath or interested in currying his favor — to help crush and eradicate criticism of his government online. However, […]
‘Kerry, Karzai Bury Hatchet in Kabul Meeting’
March 26th, 2013Sequence of events: 1) 10 March 2013, Karzai Says Taliban ‘In Service to America’: “My guess is that Karzai probably perceives that he’s not getting a big enough cut of the opium pie.” 2) 12 March 2013, Over 20 Tons of Heroin Seized in Afghanistan: “Can you hear me now?” 3) 25 March 2013: John […]
Academia Is Eating Its Young
March 24th, 2013Don’t forget the fraud: Doubts About Johns Hopkins Research Have Gone Unanswered Scientific Fraud: ‘Nobody Had Noticed the Whole Thing Was Rotten’ American Society for Microbiology: ‘Has Modern Science Become Dysfunctional?’ Via: Press Button, Go Boink: It’s a difficult time for anyone in Academia. From teaching, to funding, to publishing, to translating research, to intellectual […]
‘How did the chair of the House ethics committee end up on a corporate-backed African safari?’
March 19th, 2013Via: Mother Jones: In August 2012, as most members of Congress were hitting the campaign trail, three Republican lawmakers were enjoying an all-expenses-paid retreat at Ol Jogi, a private 66,000-acre ranch in Kenya’s lush highlands. This “African Versailles” features a golf course, racetrack, dozens of man-made lakes, around 120 miles of road, more than 200 […]
Risks of MRI Dye Omniscan? ‘Burn the Data’
March 19th, 2013Via: ProPublica: In 1994, a scientist studying her company’s new medical imaging dye reached troubling findings. Her boss, she recalls, told her to “burn the data.” That alleged request surfaced this week in a groundbreaking trial over the dye, which is injected into patients to sharpen MRI scans and has been owned since 2004 by […]
Doubts About Johns Hopkins Research Have Gone Unanswered
March 13th, 2013This one would make a great addition to your Bullshit-As-Science and Academic Grant Swindling file folders. In this situation with Nature and Johns Hopkins, note what happened to the guy who tried to expose it. Via: Washington Post: The numbers didn’t add up. Over and over, Daniel Yuan, a medical doctor and statistician, couldn’t understand […]
Thousands of Dead Pigs Found in Shanghai River
March 11th, 2013Drinking water quality normal, comrade. Via: South China Morning Post: Chinese officials have found a total of 3,323 dead pigs in a Shanghai river as of Monday afternoon and discovered swine virus in one of them, but they have stressed that the disease is not known to be infectious to humans. The virus is known […]
China: Data About Soil Pollution a ‘State Secret’
March 11th, 2013Don’t worry, they’re just a few Five-Year-Plans away from having the clean, green farmscrapers up and running. Via: Reuters: When China’s environment ministry told attorney Dong Zhengwei he couldn’t have access to two-year old data about soil pollution because it was a “state secret”, it added to mounting public outrage over the worsening environment. Microbloggers, […]
U.S. Air Force Disappears Drone Strike Statistics
March 9th, 2013Scrubbed: Click here to see the original December 2012 and January 2013 statistics and the ones apparently loaded online Feb. 22. Via: Air Force Times: As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of […]
Afghanistan: U.S.-NATO to Stop Reporting Number of Taliban Attacks
March 6th, 2013Via: Wired: One of the major metrics for the decade-long Afghanistan war is seriously flawed. Rather than fix the problem, the U.S.-NATO military command in Kabul has decided that you simply shouldn’t see the data. Late last month, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) conceded that it misreported the 2012 statistics on Taliban attacks. Its […]
