Archive for June, 2010
Caught In The Oil: BP Really Doesn’t Want You To See This
June 4th, 2010Via: Boston Globe – Big Picture: A short entry – AP Photographer Charlie Riedel just filed the following images of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana’s East Grand Terre Island. As BP engineers continue their efforts to cap the underwater flow of oil, landfall is becoming more frequent, and the […]
U.S. Citizen Among Those Killed in Israeli Flotilla Raid
June 3rd, 2010Via: Washington Post: A U.S. citizen of Turkish origin was among the nine people killed in a botched Israeli effort to stop a Turkish aid ship from reaching the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a Turkish official said Thursday.
Nuclear Option on Gulf Oil Spill? No Way, U.S. Says
June 3rd, 2010Via: New York Times: This week, with the failure of the “top kill” attempt, the buzz had grown loud enough that federal officials felt compelled to respond. Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said that neither Energy Secretary Steven Chu nor anyone else was thinking about a nuclear blast under the gulf. The […]
The Coming Artilect War
June 3rd, 2010Via: Technofascism Blog: If you haven’t heard of Hugo de Garis, AI researcher and Professor at China’s Xiamen University, then you’ve probably never heard of an Artilect either. A contraction of Artificial Intellect, the Artilects are future creations that, according to de Garis, will be immortal, godlike robotic beings that, due to being built on […]
Woman Goes Nearly $100,000 Into Debt to Get Liberal Arts Degree; Financially Screws Herself for Life
June 3rd, 2010Bubbles, bubbles and more bubbles. Via: New York Times: How many people are like her? According to the College Board’s Trends in Student Aid study, 10 percent of people who graduated in 2007-8 with student loans had borrowed $40,000 or more. The median debt for bachelor’s degree recipients who borrowed while attending private, nonprofit colleges […]
BP Rig Atlantis “An Even Bigger Disaster In The Making”
June 3rd, 2010Via: CNN: Could things get any worse for BP? Maybe. As the oil continues to flow, some are charging that another BP operation in the Gulf is an even bigger disaster in the making. For six months, Ken Abbott managed BP’s engineering documents for “Atlantis,” BP’s deep water platform nearly 200 miles south of New […]
Ohio: You’re Speeding if The Cop Thinks You Are
June 2nd, 2010Maybe I need a category called Maniac State Vampirism. Via: Dayton Daily News / AP: Ohio’s highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an officer’s visual estimation of […]
Ex-Florida GOP Chairman Indicted on Charges of Grand Theft, Money Laundering; Arrested
June 2nd, 2010Just another day at the office. Via: Orlando Sentinel: Jim Greer, the former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida who has been under criminal investigation for his financial handling of the organization, was indicted on six charges including money laundering and grand theft, state officials announced today. Greer was arrested by Florida Department of […]
DARPA Wants to Create Almanacs of Every Possible Virus Mutation
June 2nd, 2010If ever a story belonged in the Kill Off category, this is it. Via: Wired: Right now, preparing for new viral threats means looking to the past, creating hypotheses based on how pathogens have changed before. Now Darpa wants to reverse that strategy: test every possible outcome, to create a prophetic almanac that warns of […]
WikiLeaks Was Launched With Documents Intercepted From Tor
June 2nd, 2010Many technologies that amateur anonymity fetishists are attracted to are actually designed to harvest information. Put yourself in the shoes of the NSA. If you wanted a concentrated haul of the most interesting information what would you do? You would establish a honeypot: a service (free or paid) that purported to provide an anonymous web […]
