cryptogon.com

Under an agriculture ministry plan, unmanned tractors will work fields where pesticides will have been replaced by LEDs keeping rice, wheat, soybeans, fruit and vegetables safe until robots can put them in boxes.

Carbon dioxide produced by machinery working on the up to 250-hectare (600 acre) site will be channeled back to crops to boost their growth and reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, the Nikkei newspaper said.

The agricultural ministry will begin on-site research later this year with a plan to spend around four billion yen ($52 million) over the next six years, a ministry official said.

A GPS device is used to find shortcuts and avoid traffic, but Microsoft’s patent states that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures.”

With backup from digital rights groups, the woman is fighting the feds, arguing that being forced to provide her password violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against forced self-incrimination.

Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn is expected to rule any day on whether to force defendant Ramona Fricosu to decrypt her Toshiba Satellite M305, which authorities seized from her in 2010 with a court warrant while investigating financial fraud.

In this handwritten letter (note the reverse of the Great Seal) to a “Charlotte” published on his site Paul denies being a “Freemason.” And here’s where we come to the classic non-denial denial. A “Free” Mason is a member of the Ancient, Free and Accepted Masonic Order. There are other Orders that do not define themselves as “Free.” Several, actually.

And as longtime secret Sun readers know, the Free-masons are the low men on a much bigger Masonic totem pole in which Masonic-inspired and Masonic-created fraternities and secret societies wield the true power. And here’s where we hit paydirt…

Paul is a proud member in good standing of Lambda Chi Alpha, yet another Masonically-created fraternity that is classified as a “secret” fraternity. Lambda Chi traces its origins to Boston (birthplace of American Freemasonry) and Phila(e)delphia, in Paul’s native Pennsylvania. Here’s an obituary of Lambda Chi’s founding father, John E. “Jack” Mason (seriously).

Funeral services were held on Wednesday, June 5, at the Oliver H. Bair funeral parlors in Philadelphia. Cremation and private burial were in Woodland Cemetery. Masonic services were conducted by Lodge 51, of which he was a past master, the preceding evening with his close friend and associate, past Grand High Alpha Fischer, in his station of senior warden.

That Lambda Chi is in fact a Masonic fraternity and not just a drinking club is made clear by its original seal, prominently featuring a Masonic handshake. Lambda Chi also includes an inner body called “The Mason’s Circle,” a classic example of esoteric double-entendre.

But from now on, purchasers will have to be computer savvy.

As of January 1, the U.S. Treasury declared that all bonds must be purchased online through the website www.treasurydirect.gov.

The buyer can download a “gift certificate” indicating the amount of the bond, and for what occasion.

Police are treating the case as a murder, and an autopsy was conducted Tuesday to learn more about the cause of death and the identity of the victim.

The body was found on New Year’s Day three miles from the elegant country home of Sandringham in eastern England where the royals held a New Year’s Day celebration in rural splendor.

Part of the nearly 20,000-acre royal estate is open to the public, and the body was found in a forest at Anmer, a hamlet of several dozen people on the estate 115 miles northeast of London.

…

So far, there are more questions than answers about the strange discovery, which has shaken the normally quiet region where the queen and her family typically enjoy riding horses and shooting parties.

Buckingham Palace officials are keeping mum about the murder case, referring callers to the police, and police have released few details. It is not yet clear how old the victim was, how long her body had been in the woods, if she was murdered on the grounds or if her remains were put there after the slaying.

“We are at the very early stages of the investigation and it could be a complex inquiry,” Detective Chief Inspector Jes Fry said Tuesday. “The body had been there for some time.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo, in an annual “State of the State” speech to the New York legislature, said currently DNA was collected in less than half of crimes on the books.

“I will propose a bill requiring the collection of a DNA sample from any person convicted of a felony or Penal Law misdemeanor,” said Cuomo, a former federal prosecutor and New York state attorney general.

Work in general is becoming more and more ideological, and so is the workforce that does it. As technology has made production easier, employment has shifted from factories to offices, where work revolves around inherently ideological activities, such as design, analysis, writing, accounting, marketing and other creative tasks. Of course, ideology has been a workplace issue all along: Employers have always scrutinized the attitudes and values of the people they hire, to protect themselves from unionists, radicals and others whose “bad attitude” would undermine workplace discipline. Today, however, for a relatively small but rapidly growing fraction of jobs, employers will carefully assess your attitude for an additional reason: its crucial role in the work itself. On these jobs, which are in every field, from journalism and architecture to education and commercial art, your view of the world threatens to affect not only the quantity and quality of what you produce, but also the very nature of the product. These jobs require strict adherence to an assigned point of view; and so a prerequisite for employment is the willingness and ability to exercise what I call ideological discipline.

This book is about the people who get these jobs and become members of the ideological workforce—that is, professionals. My thesis is that the criteria by which individuals are deemed qualified or unqualified to become professionals involve not just technical knowledge as is generally assumed, but also attitude—in particular, attitude toward working within an assigned political and ideological framework. I contend, for example, that all tests of technical knowledge, such as the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) or the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), are at the same time tests of attitude and that the examinations used to assess professional qualification are no exception. I consider in detail how the neutral-looking technical questions on such examinations probe the candidate’s attitude. The qualifying attitude, I find, is an uncritical, subordinate one, which allows professionals to take their ideological lead from their employers and appropriately fine-tune the outlook that they bring to their work. The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology. The political and intellectual timidity of today’s most highly educated employees is no accident.

It took forever to find a second source for confirmation of this story and both relatively mainstream media outlets are in Israel. With one source saying the military deployment and corresponding exercises are to occur in January, the source providing most of the details suggests it will occur later this spring. Calling it not just an “exercise”, but a “deployment”, the Jerusalem Post quotes US Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc, Commander of the US Third Air Force based in Germany. The US Commander visited Israel two weeks ago to confirm details for “the deployment of several thousand American soldiers to Israel.” In an effort to respond to recent Iranian threats and counter-threats, Israel announced the largest ever missile defense exercise in its history. Now, it’s reported that the US military, including the US Navy, will be stationed throughout Israel, also taking part.

While American troops will be stationed in Israel for an unspecified amount of time, Israeli military personnel will be added to EUCOM in Germany. EUCOM stands for United States European Command.