Archive for February, 2012
Test Tube Hamburgers
February 20th, 2012Via: Telegraph: By generating strips of meat from stem cells researchers believe they can create a product that is identical to a real burger. The process of culturing the artificial meat in the lab is so laborious that the finished product, expected to arrive in eight months’ time, will cost about £220,000 (EUR250,000). But researchers […]
Laser ‘Dazzler’ Weapon Approved for Use by Police and Coast Guard
February 20th, 2012Via: New Scientist: THE US police and coastguard may soon start using laser “dazzlers” like those the American and British militaries have employed for years at checkpoints in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the SHOT Show last month in Las Vegas, Nevada, B.E. Meyers Electro-Optics of Redmond, Washington, unveiled the first laser dazzler that has been […]
Canada: Section 34 of the Online Surveillance Bill Would Give Orwellian Powers to Government-Appointed ‘Inspectors’
February 20th, 2012Via: CBC: Among other things, the bill requires ISPs to install surveillance technology and software to enable monitoring of phone and internet traffic. Section 34 is there to make sure ISPs comply. So what, exactly, does it say? Essentially, it says that government agents may enter an ISP when they wish, without a warrant, and […]
Britain: Details of Every Phone Call, Text Message, Email and Websites Visited Will Be Stored in Vast Corporate Databases for the Government to Access
February 20th, 2012Via: Telegraph: Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme. The databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and […]
Nuclear Weapons on a Highway Near You
February 20th, 2012Via: Mother Jones: “Is that it?” My wife leans forward in the passenger seat of our sensible hatchback and points ahead to an 18-wheeler that’s hauling ass toward us on a low-country stretch of South Carolina’s Highway 125. We’ve been heading west from I-95 toward the Savannah River Site nuclear facility on the Georgia-South Carolina […]
Israel Deploying ‘Iron Dome’ in Tel Aviv
February 20th, 2012Via: AFP: The Israeli military will on Monday deploy a battery of rocket interceptors from its “Iron Dome” system in the Tel Aviv region, a military spokesman said on Sunday. “Iron Dome is being incorporated into the heart of the Israeli military. As part of this process, the system is deployed in different sites and […]
Saudi Arabia Cuts Oil Output
February 20th, 2012It’s going to be another interesting spring at American gas stations… Via: CNBC: The world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, appears to have cut both its oil production and export in December, according to the latest update by the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI), an official source of oil production, consumption and export data. The […]
Iran Stops Oil Sales to British, French Companies
February 19th, 2012Via: Reuters: Iran has stopped selling crude to British and French companies, the oil ministry said on Sunday, in a retaliatory measure against fresh EU sanctions on the Islamic state’s lifeblood, oil. “Exporting crude to British and French companies has been stopped … we will sell our oil to new customers,” spokesman Alireza Nikzad was […]
DARPA Wants to Give Soldiers Robot Surrogates, Avatar Style
February 19th, 2012Via: IEEE: In the movie Avatar, humans hooked themselves up to brain-machine-interface pods with which they could control giant genetically engineered human-alien hybrids. It’s just a movie, but DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, doesn’t care: It wants this kind of system to be real, just replace “giant genetically engineered human-alien hybrids” with […]
NYPD Monitored Muslim Students All Over Northeast
February 19th, 2012Via: AP: The New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools far beyond the city limits, including the elite Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned. Police talked with local authorities about professors 480 kilometres away in Buffalo and […]
