Archive for June, 2007
The CIA’s Favorite Form of Torture
June 7th, 2007Via: Salon: Sensory deprivation, as CIA research and other agency interrogation materials demonstrate, is a remarkably simple concept. It can be inflicted by immobilizing individuals in small, soundproof rooms and fitting them with blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. “The first thing that happens is extraordinary hallucinations akin to mescaline,” explained McCoy. “I mean extreme hallucinations” of […]
Los Angeles: Driest Ever
June 7th, 2007Throwing trash in toilets? Does anyone understand this? Are they trying to flush their empty Evian water bottles? Via: Reuters: Los Angeles residents were urged on Wednesday to take shorter showers, reduce lawn sprinklers and stop throwing trash in toilets in a bid to cut water usage by 10 percent in the driest year on […]
OPEC Squirms on Biofuel Threat
June 7th, 2007Large scale use of biofuels is dumb, OPEC is dumb and both are doomed. See the retired general and the boys from Boeing/Spectrolab on your way out. Thank you for serving the American Empire, but it’s clean green fascism now. Enjoy your desert wasteland and your dry oil wells. Next! Via: Financial Times: Opec on […]
Morgan Stanley’s 3-Alarm Sell Signal
June 7th, 2007HA! A “full house” triple Magic-8 Ball alarm! I wonder if this announcement was accompanied by a loud klaxon and flashing red lights? I need my old Quake 2 sound board: “IMPRESSIVE.” Via: Business Week: There have been a number of bearish analyst calls on stocks amid the recent global stock rally, but it took […]
Becky Is Pregnant
June 7th, 2007Becky and I have been keeping a secret for a few months, but we’d like to share it now. Our first child is due in the middle of November. Back in March, in response to a story about college students having to pay more for birth control pills, I wrote about the Ladycomp, an incredible […]
May Earnings
June 7th, 2007May earnings for Cryptogon and Farmlet came to a total of $1928.21, or nearly 4X the minimum monthly goal of $500. May is an expensive month for us because things like home and car insurance, car registration, warrant of fitness, are all due at once. Dagobaz actually exceeded the minimum monthly goal on her own […]
Mad Pig Disease: Woman Faced Jail Time for “Staring” at a Police Dog
June 6th, 2007Via: Times Argus: A woman facing jail time for “staring” at a police dog had charges against her dropped Monday after an Orange County prosecutor viewed videotape of the alleged crime. Jayna Hutchinson, now of Lebanon, N.H., was scheduled for a jury trial this week on a misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals. A Vermont […]
Cyclone Gonu Sweeps Oman, Disrupts Oil, Shipping
June 6th, 2007Just a reminder to keep an eye on this because the mainstream media is making a point of playing it down. As it stands now, the Persian Gulf is essentially closed to transport shipping for the next 48 hours. That’s a big deal. Damage to critical energy infrastructure? Unknown. Via: Reuters: Cyclone Gonu pummeled Oman […]
Syria Drops U.S. Dollar Peg, United Arab Emirates Might Follow
June 6th, 2007Via: Gulf Times: The UAE may be the next Middle Eastern country to stop pegging its exchange rate to the US dollar, according to trading in currency forwards. The second-largest Arab economy may follow Syria and Kuwait, which both said in the past two weeks that they would dump the dollar peg to curb rising […]
Massacres and Paramilitary Land Seizures Behind the Biofuel Revolution
June 6th, 2007Clean and green… Via: Guardian: Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy. Surging demand for “green” fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. […]
