TSA Backscatter Radiation Safety Tests Were Rigged
May 19th, 2011Via: Natural News:
The document is heavily redacted with red stamps over the words and figures. In every case the electric current used which correlates one to one with X-ray dose has been specifically redacted. Thus there is no way to repeat any of these measurements. While the report purports to present the results of objective testing, in fact the JHU APL personnel, who are unnamed anywhere in the document either as experimenters or as authors, were not provided with a machine by Rapiscan. Instead they were invited to the manufacturing site to observe a mock-up of components (spare parts) that were said to be similar to those that are parts of the Rapiscan system. The tests were performed by the manufacturer using the manufacturer’s questionable test procedures.
Research Credit: Pookie
Air Force Wants to Track You Forever With a Single Camera Click
May 19th, 2011Via: Wired:
Don’t bother with the iris scanner or the fingerprinting machine. Leave the satellite-enabled locators and tell-tale scents back on the base, military manhunters. If an Air Force plan works out as planned, all you’ll need to track your prey is a single camera, snapping a few seconds of footage from far, far away.
Huntsville, Alabama’s Photon-X, Inc. recently received an Air Force contract to develop such a camera. With one snap, the company claims, its sensor can build a three-dimensional image of a person’s face: the cornerstone of a distinctive “bio-signature” that can be used to track that person anywhere. With a few frames more, the device can capture that face’s unique facial muscle motions, and turn those movements into a “behaviormetric” profile that’s even more accurate.
Hedge Farm: The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedge Fund Managers Into Survivalists
May 19th, 2011Via: New York Observer:
This is happening in part because investors see their play as a hedge against hyperinflation. While the rest of the world uses the current calculation of the Consumer Price Index as a proxy for the cost of goods, some farmland investors are using a different equation, one from 1980. These investors assert inflation should be calculated the way it was before the Boskin Commission’s 1996 reworking of the CPI formula-in which case, it would be much, much higher.
“The CPI supposedly today is something like 1.5 percent,” says the hedge fund manager. “We think the actual rate of inflation is something closer to 6 or 7 percent on an annual basis. It’s also not about what it’s been over the last 10 years; it’s about what it’s going to be over the next 10 years.”
U.S. Centers for Disease Control Advises: Prepare for Zombie Apocalypse
May 19th, 2011Has the site been hacked, or did they actually post this?
Via: CDC:
There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.
Gavin Andresen, Project Lead of Bitcoin, Invited to Speak at CIA
May 19th, 2011Via: Bitcoin Forum:
I want to get this out in the open because it is the kind of thing that will generate conspiracy theories: I’m going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at an emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community.
I accepted the invitation to speak because the fact that I was invited means Bitcoin is already on their radar, and I think it might be a good chance to talk about why I think Bitcoin will make the world a better place. I think the goals of this project are to create a better currency, create a more competitive and efficient international payment system, and give people more direct control over their finances. And I don’t think any of those goals are incompatible with the goals of government.
I’m only very slightly worried that talking about bitcoin at the CIA will increase the chances they’ll try to do something we don’t want them to do. I think accepting their invitation and being open about exactly what bitcoin is will make it less likely they’ll see it as a threat.
PS: Full disclosure: I’ll be paid a one-time fee of $3,000 to cover expenses and pay me for my time. I don’t want any “Gavin is on the CIA’s payroll” rumors to get started, either…
As always, comments and questions and discussion welcome. I’d really rather not hear any conspiracy theories about how they’ll secretly implant a mind-control chip in my head while I’m there, though….
Burzynski – Cancer Is Serious Business
May 18th, 2011Via: Burzynski: The Movie:
The Strange Case of Solar Flares Changing Rates of Radioactive Decay
May 18th, 2011Via: Standford University News:
No one knows how neutrinos could interact with radioactive materials to change their rate of decay.
“It doesn’t make sense according to conventional ideas,” Fischbach said. Jenkins whimsically added, “What we’re suggesting is that something that doesn’t really interact with anything is changing something that can’t be changed.”
And Now… J.P. Morgan’s Hunt for Afghan Gold
May 18th, 2011Ultimately, victory will mean that Afghanistan becomes pacified in a manner that facilities effortless corporate rape. The purpose of the U.S. military is to tie the victim down. Then, the people in the suits step into the room…
J.P. Morgan bankers, who just happen to be former British SAS members, are working with the U.S. military and its puppet Afghan regime to set up mining operations throughout Afghanistan.
If any article belongs at the top of your Must Read pile, this is it.
Via: Fortune/CNN:
To Hannam, chairman of J.P. Morgan Capital Markets, Afghanistan represents a gigantic, untapped opportunity — one of the last great natural-resource frontiers. Landlocked and pinioned by imperial invaders, Afghanistan has been cursed by its geography for thousands of years. Now, for the first time, Hannam believes, that geography could be an asset. The two most resource-starved nations on the planet, China and India, sit next door to Afghanistan, where, according to Pentagon estimates, minerals worth nearly $1 trillion lie buried. True, there is a war under way. And it’s unclear how the death of Osama bin Laden will impact the country’s political and economic environment. But Hannam is not your usual investment banker: A former soldier, he has done business in plenty of strife-torn countries. So have all the members of his team, two of them former special forces soldiers who have fought here.
Toxin from GM Crops Found in Human Blood
May 18th, 2011Via: India Today:
Fresh doubts have arisen about the safety of genetically modified crops, with a new study reporting presence of Bt toxin, used widely in GM crops, in human blood for the first time.
Genetically modified crops include genes extracted from bacteria to make them resistant to pest attacks.
These genes make crops toxic to pests but are claimed to pose no danger to the environment and human health. Genetically modified brinjal, whose commercial release was stopped a year ago, has a toxin derived from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis ( Bt).
Till now, scientists and multinational corporations promoting GM crops have maintained that Bt toxin poses no danger to human health as the protein breaks down in the human gut. But the presence of this toxin in human blood shows that this does not happen.
Scientists from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, have detected the insecticidal protein, Cry1Ab, circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women.
They have also detected the toxin in fetal blood, implying it could pass on to the next generation. The research paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Reproductive Toxicology. The study covered 30 pregnant women and 39 women who had come for tubectomy at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS) in Quebec.
None of them had worked or lived with a spouse working in contact with pesticides.
They were all consuming typical Canadian diet that included GM foods such as soybeans, corn and potatoes. Blood samples were taken before delivery for pregnant women and at tubal ligation for non-pregnant women. Umbilical cord blood sampling was done after birth.
Cry1Ab toxin was detected in 93 per cent and 80 per cent of maternal and fetal blood samples, respectively and in 69 per cent of tested blood samples from non-pregnant women. Earlier studies had found trace amounts of the Cry1Ab toxin in gastrointestinal contents of livestock fed on GM corn. This gave rise to fears that the toxins may not be effectively eliminated in humans and there may be a high risk of exposure through consumption of contaminated meat.
Avoid Gate Grope, Become a ‘Trusted Traveler’
May 18th, 2011Via: USA Today:
Upset with being frisked and having a naked image taken of you at airports?
Increasingly, stringent air security screening methods such as these are under question. And they’re not just being questioned by travelers upset at being groped. A consensus is building among the airline industry, business and leisure travel groups and even top government officials that something needs to change.
The alternative they’re looking to: traveler verification systems akin to trusted traveler programs, in which people’s backgrounds are checked beforehand, and they verify who they are when they get ready to board a flight.
The Transportation Security Administration and airlines already are testing a verification program for airline crews, which could end aggressive screening of them. It’s time, airlines around the world say, that similar programs — and tiered programs — should be extended to trusted or known travelers.
