NFL Wants Pat-Downs from Ankles Up at All Stadiums
September 16th, 2011Via: USA Today:
The NFL wants all fans patted down from the ankles up this season to improve fan safety.
Under the new “enhanced” pat-down procedures, the NFL wants all 32 clubs to search fans from the ankles to the knees as well as the waist up. Previously, security guards only patted down fans from the waist up while looking for booze, weapons or other banned items.
The stricter physical screening policy impacts the 16.6 million fans expected to attend live regular season NFL games this season. The more thorough searches will spell longer lines for ticket-holding fans seeking entry to games. It’s sure to raise the ire of some fans who consider it an invasion of privacy.
Gold: Weekly Interval
September 16th, 2011Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
On gold, I’m focusing on the weekly interval after the unwinding of the recent double top on the daily.
As of now, there is no damage to the long term bullish technical picture on gold. It’s debatable where long term damage would occur, but the three supporting trendlines on the chart below offer rough guidelines. Nearer term, I think support is likely ahead as the relevant Fibonacci retracement levels are reached.
Spot Gold, Weekly Interval
On the standard retracement levels, I see the 50% at ~$1700 as having a better chance of providing a good swing low than either the 38.2% at ~$1751 or the 61.8% at ~$1647.
A move below the 61.8% at ~$1647 sets up the trendline support that’s about to pass through $1600.
What Will Video Games Will Be Like in a Few Decades?
September 16th, 2011Here’s an example of a video game that I thought was fun when I was young: Choplifter (1982):
Now, nearly three decades later, take a look at some gameplay footage from the upcoming, Battlefield 3:
As I was watching that Battlefield 3 trailer, I found myself squinting, blinking and setting the volume to mute. (Maybe my parents would have done the same thing if I had tried to sit them down to play Choplifter back then.) But look at the difference between Choplifter and Battlefield 3. Woh!
This led me to wonder what video games might be like in another 30 years? (Assuming humans aren’t extinct, of course, and that indulgences like video games are still common.)
For me, the big question is not so much about the nature of the games, but whether the action will take place on a computer screen at all, or in the mind’s eye, so to speak, using some form of neurocomputing interface. Sci-fi has been prepping us for this for a long time with films like The Matrix, 13th Floor, Avatar, Surrogates, Inception, and Source Code.
What do you think? Is a Matrix-like neurocomputing interface any more likely in the next 30 years than other sci-fi staples like teleportation (not quantum teleportation, which is real) and time travel?
Another Global Banking Sector Bailout / Can Kicking Exercise
September 15th, 2011Europe: The new Lehman Brothers.
Via: Daily Ticker:
Stocks surged in the U.S. and Europe early Thursday while Treasury prices tumbled on news of a coordinated easing by global central banks.
“The Governing Council of the European Central Bank has decided, in coordination with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, to conduct three US dollar liquidity-providing operations with a maturity of approximately three months covering the end of the year,” the ECB said in a statement.
Translation: The world’s central bankers will provide as much money as necessary until year-end to stem a brewing funding crisis among European banks. The move follows a report yesterday that two European banks were unable to get short-term dollar funding in private markets and were forced to tap the ECB for $575 million.
U.S. Unable to Account for 36k Pounds of Its Own Weapons Grade Uranium and Plutonium
September 15th, 2011This is madness.
Via: Business Insider:
Under special nuclear cooperation agreements, the United States sent 38,580 pounds of enriched uranium and plutonium to more than two-dozen foreign agencies and is unable to account for 36,000 pounds of the material.
The Government Accountability Office report says these 27 cooperation agreements, set up to facilitate cross border research, have no accountability and the U.S. has no way to enforce control.
Because there is no reporting process in place, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been visiting nuclear storage sites overseas when permitted, but has not regularly visited countries with the greatest risk of proliferation.
Related: GAO Report
Research Credit: DR
U.K. Researchers to Test “Artificial Volcano” for Geoengineering the Climate
September 15th, 2011Via: Scientific American:
Next month, researchers in the U.K. will start to pump water nearly a kilometer up into the atmosphere, by way of a suspended hose.
The experiment is the first major test of a piping system that could one day spew sulfate particles into the stratosphere at an altitude of 20 kilometers, supported by a stadium-size hydrogen balloon. The goal is geoengineering, or the “deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment” in the words of the Royal Society of London, which provides scientific advice to policymakers. In this case, researchers are attempting to re-create the effects of volcanic eruptions to artificially cool Earth.
The $30,000 test, part of a project called Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE), is inspired by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. That volcano spewed 20 million tons of sulfate particles into the atmosphere, cooling Earth by 0.5 degree Celsius for 18 months. If the British feasibility tests are successful, the balloon-and-hose contraption could be used to inject additional particles into the stratosphere, thereby reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space, and hopefully curbing some of the effects of global warming.
“This is one of the first times that people have taken geoengineering out of the lab and into the field,” lead scientist Matthew Watson said Tuesday during a press conference in London. “We are still decades away—and I do mean decades—from doing real geoengineering.” Watson said his team still needs to determine which substances would work best at reflecting light, how much is needed to have an effect, and the possible unintended consequences of injecting the particles into the atmosphere, such as acid rain, ozone depletion or weather pattern disruption.
Zero Day Industrial Control System Exploits Published
September 15th, 2011Via: SC Magazine:
A security researcher has disclosed a laundry list of unpatched vulnerabilities and detailed proof-of-concept exploits that allow hackers to completely compromise major industrial control systems.
Security researcher Luigi Auriemma disclosed the attacks against six SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems including US giant Rockwell Automation.
The step-by-step exploits allowed attackers to execute full remote compromises and denial of service attacks.
Some of the affected SCADA systems were used in power, water and waste distribution and agriculture.
Such zero-day information disclosure was generally frowned upon in the information security industry because it exposed customers to attack while published vulnerabilities remained unpatched.
Attacks against SCADA systems were particularly controversial because exploits could affect a host of machinery from lift control mechanisms to power plants.
NRO Will Display Ancient Spy Satellites
September 15th, 2011Via: The Space Review:
Later this week the National Reconnaissance Office is going to reveal information on two of its Cold War era satellite programs, HEXAGON and GAMBIT, and publicly unveil hardware that has been classified for decades. GAMBIT was started in 1960, with a first launch in 1963. HEXAGON started in 1966, with a first launch in 1971. Both programs operated until the mid-1980s. Both used cameras that recorded their images on film that was parachuted to Earth. Both were highly successful. And both represented the pinnacle of American Cold War intelligence collection technology, unmatched in capabilities by any other nation.
This declassification has been in the works for a long time. It was originally proposed for the late 1990s and then postponed. It is now timed to coincide with the NRO’s fiftieth anniversary.
According to several sources, the NRO plans to display several declassified objects on the grounds of the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Museum for a short period of time, possibly only on September 17. One of these objects is the massive camera system from the KH-9 HEXAGON. Another is the camera system from the KH-7 GAMBIT. Several other objects may be displayed as well. After a very brief appearance at the museum, the objects are going to be hauled away for display at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton. It is not clear if they will return to the Udvar-Hazy Museum, which is busy preparing for the exchange of the Enterprise with the space shuttle Discovery next year. Although the Air Force played a vital role in these programs, the Dayton museum is not as easy to reach as the Udvar-Hazy Museum, which is also located only a few kilometers from the NRO’s headquarters.
LA Porn Studio Begins Construction on ‘Post-Apocalyptic’ Underground Bunker
September 15th, 2011This is hilarious.
Via: CBS:
A San Fernando Valley adult entertainment studio began construction this month on what it calls a “post-apocalyptic” underground bunker in anticipation of a global catastrophe rumored to take place in late 2012.
A spokesman for Van Nuys-based Pink Visual said the bunker will be “far more than a mere bomb shelter or subterranean survivalist enclave” with amenities such as multiple fully-stocked bars, an enormous performing stage and a sophisticated content production studio.
“Our goal is nothing less than to survive the apocalypse to come in comfort and luxury,” said Pink Visual spokesman Quentin Boyer, “whether that catastrophe takes the form of fireballs flung earthward by an all-seeing deity, extended torrential rainfall, Biblical rapture, an earthquake-driven mega-tsunami, radioactive flesh-eating zombies, or some combination of the above.”
The studio’s website will also be maintained and updated throughout any potential disaster “even if those websites are only available on the bunker’s self-contained local network by that time,” Boyer added.
He declined to give the exact location of the bunker over “security concerns”.
Swissair Crash May Not Have Been an Accident
September 15th, 2011Via: CBC:
An investigator looking into the crash of Swissair Flight 111 near Peggys Cove, N.S., says he was prevented by senior RCMP and aviation safety officials from pursuing his theory that an incendiary device might have been the cause.
“There was sufficient grounds to suspect a criminal device on that plane,” retired RCMP sergeant Tom Juby, who was an arson investigator assigned to the Swissair file, told CBC’s The Fifth Estate.
“I’m convinced that the investigation was improperly done,” he said.
The flight from New York to Geneva crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 2, 1998, killing 229 passengers and crew. The plane carried a Saudi prince, a relative of the former shah of Iran and high profile UN officials. A half a billion dollars of diamonds and gems were also never found.
The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada said that it was an accident caused by a fire in the cockpit, likely sparked by an electrical fault.
But Juby said high levels of magnesium — a key ingredient in an incendiary device — were discovered in the cockpit area. Several other investigators and a federal scientist who The Fifth Estate spoke to supported Juby’s informed suspicions.
Metallurgist Dr. Jim Brown discovered suspicious levels of magnesium and other elements associated with arson in melted wiring from the section of the plane that suffered the greatest fire damage.
“There was a lot of magnesium. More than I would have expected,” he said.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
