France Ranked Best Place to Live—Again

January 7th, 2010

Via: International Living:

To produce this annual Index we consider nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate. This involves a lot of number crunching from “official” sources, including government websites, the World Health Organization, and The Economist, to name but a few. We also take into account what our editors from all over the world have to say about our findings.

Below are the countries that win our top 10 in this year’s Quality of Life Index and the final scores for each country in every category.

Posted in Off Topic | Top Of Page | Comments Off on France Ranked Best Place to Live—Again

Cocaine Vaccine Leads Addicts to Take Ten Times More Cocaine

January 7th, 2010

A novel way of boosting demand?

Via: Popular Science:

Over the last decade, the advances in neuroscience that led doctors to view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing, raised the natural question of whether or not addicts could be vaccinated against drug use as if it were a virus. While the theory remains valid, the recent clinical trial of one of those vaccines, called TA-CD, highlights the complexity of the issue.

TA-CD works by preventing cocaine from entering the brain, thus stopping the user from getting high. It does not, however, stop cravings, leading some test participants who received the vaccine to take 10 times as much cocaine in the hopes of overriding the vaccine and getting high, or to bankrupt themselves while trying to do so.

According to the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, some participants in the study bumped more yeyo than the researchers conducting the study had every seen before. Others lost all their money buying one cut of charlie after another in the vain hopes of finding a package that actually got them high.

Amazingly, none of the test subjects overdosed.

Of the 58 subjects who received the vaccine, only 11 managed to stay off of the Bolivian marching powder for more than half of the time they participated in the study.


Stimulus to Bring Body Scanners to Airports

January 7th, 2010

Mission accomplished.

Via: CNN:

The U.S. government is using $25 million in stimulus money to buy and install full body scanners in airports this year, in an effort to ramp up security and create jobs.

The Transportation Security Administration is using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to purchase 150 of the full body scanners, according to TSA spokeswoman Sarah Horowitz.

These “backscatter” scanners, which use X-rays to provide detailed images of hidden objects in or under a person’s clothing, are manufactured by Rapiscan, a subsidiary of Hawthorn, Calif.-based OSI (OSIS). The scanners cost from $150,000 to $180,000 apiece, according to the company.

Peter Kant, vice president of global government affairs for Rapiscan, said his company received a $25 million contract from the TSA to produce the 150 backscatter scanners. The contract has helped create 25 jobs, mostly manufacturing positions in the company’s Ocean Springs, Miss. facility, as well as some engineering jobs, he said.

Kant said the U.S. government has given the TSA the green light to spend $173 million on scanners, which includes the initial $25 million contract.

“Should we get additional orders, we will have to hire additional manufacturing positions,” he said in an e-mail to CNNMoney.com.


No Bailout for Greece

January 6th, 2010

Via: Reuters:

EU officials arrived in Greece on Wednesday for an inspection visit, hours after ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark was quoted as saying the bloc would not bail out Greece if its debt problem worsened.

The government’s broad outline of how it will get out of its fiscal mess has not impressed markets, making the talks with Brussels on the details of a long-term budgetary plan Greece must submit by end January a sensitive point for investors.

“The EU officials are here (at the finance ministry), they are looking at the draft of the plan,” a senior finance ministry official said. “They will meet in the coming days officials from the health, labour, defence, and economy ministries.”

In a sign of increasing pressure on Greece to get its finances back in order, Stark told Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore that EU states would not help out.

“The markets are deluding themselves when they think at a certain point the other member states will put their hands on their wallets to save Greece,” Stark said in the newspaper.

Greek bond spreads widened slightly in response to the report, which helped to push the euro down for a short time. But analysts said Stark’s comments did not necessarily mean the EU would refuse to assist Greece if aid became necessary to prevent a debt default.

They said Stark was probably using tough rhetoric in an effort to press the Greek government, and Greek public opinion, into accepting major public spending cuts to bring the country’s budget deficit down to levels permitted for euro zone states.

“I’m very confident that were help to be needed, it would be there because there’s so much at stake for the euro area,” said Jacques Cailloux, euro zone economist at RBS.


2.4 Million Pounds of Plastic Pollution Enter the World’s Oceans Every Hour

January 6th, 2010

Plasticalypse.

Via: Chris Jordan:

This new series looks at mass phenomena that occur on a global scale. Similarly to the first Running the Numbers series, each image portrays a specific quantity of something: the number of tuna fished from the world’s oceans every fifteen minutes, for example. But this time the statistics are global in scale, rather than specifically American.

Finding meaning in global mass phenomena can be difficult because the phenomena themselves are invisible, spread across the earth in millions of separate places. There is no Mount Everest of waste that we can make a pilgrimage to and behold the sobering aggregate of our discarded stuff, seeing and feeling it viscerally with our senses.

Instead, we are stuck with trying to comprehend the gravity of these phenomena through the anaesthetizing and emotionally barren language of statistics. Sociologists tell us that the human mind cannot meaningfully grasp numbers higher than a few thousand; yet every day we read of mass phenomena characterized by numbers in the millions, billions, even trillions.

Compounding this challenge is our sense of insignificance as individuals in a world of 6.7 billion people. And if we fully open ourselves to the horrors of our times, we also risk becoming overwhelmed, panicked, or emotionally paralyzed.

I believe it is worth connecting with these issues and allowing them to matter to us personally, despite the complex mixtures of anger, fear, grief, and rage that this process can entail. Perhaps these uncomfortable feelings can become part of what connects us, serving as fuel for courageous individual and collective action as citizens of a new kind of global community. This hope continues to motivate my work.

The first few pieces below depict statistics about threats to the world’s marine ecosystems…


Parents Arrested for Failing to Register Home-Schooled Kids

January 6th, 2010

Via: CBS6:

A Montgomery County couple has been arrested on child endangerment charges for failing to register their children with the school district as they were home-schooled, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said Monday.

Richard Cressy, 47, and Margie Cressy, 41, both of the town of Glen, never registered their four children or their home-schooling curriculum with the local school district, said the Sheriff’s Office.

The Superintendent of the Fonda-Fultonville Central School District confirmed the four children, ranging in age from 8 to 14, had not been registered with the school district for the last seven years.

The Cressys were issued appearance tickets to appear in the Town of Glen Court at a later date. The case has been turned over to the Montgomery County District Attorney and the Child Protective Unit.


European Parliament to Investigate “Pandemic” Scam

January 6th, 2010

Via: Global Research:

The Council of Europe member states will launch an inquiry in January 2010 on the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign, focusing especially on extent of the pharma‘s industry’s influence on WHO. The Health Committee of the EU Parliament has unanimously passed a resolution calling for the inquiry. The step is a long-overdue move to public transparency of a “Golden Triangle” of drug corruption between WHO, the pharma industry and academic scientists that has permanently damaged the lives of millions and even caused death.

The parliament motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, former SPD Member of the German Bundestag and now chairman of the Health Committee of PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe). Wodarg is a medical doctor and epidemiologist, a specialist in lung disease and environmental medicine, who considers the current “pandemic” Swine Flu campaign of the WHO to be “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the Century.”


What’s New in the British Police State?

January 6th, 2010

The relentless crapification of Britain continues. Click through for lots of links.

Via: Josh Fulton:

We last checked in with the British police state about two months ago. Let’s see what’s new.


Explosive Reached Ireland After “Failed Test”

January 5th, 2010

Via: RTE:

A quantity of explosive, found in a flat on Dorset Street in Dublin this morning, was brought into the country following a failed security operation in Slovakia.

It is understood the explosive was one of eight pieces of contraband planted by the authorities in the luggage of unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava Airport in Slovakia last weekend as part of a test of security procedures.

Seven were detected by airport security, but the eighth – 90g of research development explosive or RDX – was put in the luggage of a Slovakian electrician who lives and works in Dublin.

The 49-year-old unwittingly brought the material to Dublin when he returned from Christmas holidays.

Gardaí were eventually alerted this morning following a call from police in Bratislava and the flat on Dorset Street was sealed off.

During the operation, the adjoining homes and businesses were evacuated as the Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit removed the explosive for further analysis.

Both Gardiner Street and Lower Dorset street were closed off for about an hour.

The Slovakian man was arrested at the scene, but gardaí are now satisfied that he is innocent and he was released from custody this afternoon. He will not face charges.

The Departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs have been informed and the incident will be dealt with through diplomatic channels.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said he was very concerned about the fact that the gardaí were not alerted for three days and has asked for a full report.


Chertoff Shills for Body Scanner Manufacturer

January 5th, 2010

Via: Boston Globe:

Since the attempted bombing of a US airliner on Christmas Day, former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff has given dozens of media interviews touting the need for the federal government to buy more full-body scanners for airports.

What he has made little mention of is that the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the machines. Chertoff disclosed the relationship on a CNN program Wednesday, in response to a question.

An airport passengers’ rights group on Thursday criticized Chertoff’s use of his former government credentials to advocate for a product that benefits his clients.

“Mr. Chertoff should not be allowed to abuse the trust the public has placed in him as a former public servant to privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners under the pretense that the scanners would have detected this particular type of explosive,’’ said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, which opposes the use of the scanners.

Chertoff’s advocacy for the technology dates to his time in the Bush administration. In 2005, Homeland Security ordered the government’s first batch of the scanners – five from California-based Rapiscan Systems. Rapiscan is one of only two companies that make full-body scanners in accordance with current contract specifications required by the federal government.


« Previous Page — Next Page »