Ford: Biggest Loss Ever
January 25th, 2007Via: CNN:
Ford Motor Co. reported the largest annual loss in company history Thursday, as the embattled automaker posted a fourth-quarter loss that was worse than analysts’ expectations and the company warned of worse showings ahead.
Weak sales of its key pickup trucks in the quarter and $9.9 billion in after-tax charges resulted in $12.7 billion loss for 2006. That works out to a loss of just over $24,000 a minute throughout the course of the year, or about the price of a Ford Mustang.
Street-Fighting Robot Challenge Announced
January 25th, 2007They want terminator robots more than anything.
Via: New Scientist:
A contest to build a robot that can operate autonomously in urban warfare conditions, moving in and out of buildings to search and destroy targets like a human soldier, was launched in Singapore on Tuesday.
The country’s Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) is offering one million Singapore dollars ($652,000) to whoever develops a robot that completes a stipulated set of tasks – yet to be revealed – in the fastest time possible.
How The Brain Rewires Itself
January 25th, 2007This is pretty wild, especially considering the mental prisons we could be building for ourselves with our thoughts…
The brain is going to build whatever structures you empower it to build (or allow others to build), good or bad.
Via: Time:
It was a fairly modest experiment, as these things go, with volunteers trooping into the lab at Harvard Medical School to learn and practice a little five-finger piano exercise. Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone instructed the members of one group to play as fluidly as they could, trying to keep to the metronome’s 60 beats per minute. Every day for five days, the volunteers practiced for two hours. Then they took a test.
At the end of each day’s practice session, they sat beneath a coil of wire that sent a brief magnetic pulse into the motor cortex of their brain, located in a strip running from the crown of the head toward each ear. The so-called transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS) test allows scientists to infer the function of neurons just beneath the coil. In the piano players, the TMS mapped how much of the motor cortex controlled the finger movements needed for the piano exercise. What the scientists found was that after a week of practice, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas like dandelions on a suburban lawn.
The finding was in line with a growing number of discoveries at the time showing that greater use of a particular muscle causes the brain to devote more cortical real estate to it. But Pascual-Leone did not stop there. He extended the experiment by having another group of volunteers merely think about practicing the piano exercise. They played the simple piece of music in their head, holding their hands still while imagining how they would move their fingers. Then they too sat beneath the TMS coil.
When the scientists compared the TMS data on the two groups–those who actually tickled the ivories and those who only imagined doing so–they glimpsed a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the physical structure and function of our gray matter. For what the TMS revealed was that the region of motor cortex that controls the piano-playing fingers also expanded in the brains of volunteers who imagined playing the music–just as it had in those who actually played it.
“Mental practice resulted in a similar reorganization” of the brain, Pascual-Leone later wrote. If his results hold for other forms of movement (and there is no reason to think they don’t), then mentally practicing a golf swing or a forward pass or a swimming turn could lead to mastery with less physical practice. Even more profound, the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.
Screen Addiction: Manipulating America
January 25th, 2007Did you know that the Nazis provided slave laborers with prostitutes?! According to this Independent article, “The idea was conceived by Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi SS chief, as an incentive for slave labourers.”
For years, I’ve had suspicion that the ubiquitous availability of free pornography on the Internet had a PSYOP component. I didn’t bother trying to articulate the hunch, or research it further. The topic seemed too weird and disturbing, even for me.
However, after reading that Independent article about the Nazi sex slaves (and the piece below about addictions to various electronic screens), I have to wonder: Is the Internet being used as a force multiplier of the sex-for-the-slaves concept that was used by the Third Reich?
I’m sure someone with a formal psychology background could comment on the lizard brain components of our behavior, and how the visual cortex is an easy vector to access our lizard brains…
In the meantime, keep these weird concepts in mind as you read this excellent piece by Nancy Levant.
Via: News with Views:
How do free people say good-bye to freedom? This is the only real question people must ask themselves unless one happens to be a billionaire. As wealth is now the only badge of freedom, and as the American masses continue to lose jobs, private property, Constitutional rights, opportunity, and intellectual capacity, it is clear that our trajectory is spiraling downward into the new dictatorial definitions of our political handlers. Feudalism is alive and well on the homeland, and we are trapped like rats in constant states of mass manipulation and unadulterated ignorance.
It’s been obvious for centuries that clear warnings cannot be heard by historically challenged people. Americans are completely ignorant when it comes to the history of this nation and the world – remarkably ignorant. They have never studied the history of the Federal Reserve, their educational system, nor their Constitutional government. Instead, they have blindly accepted everything that televised elites have dictated on their behalf. American people STILL haven’t learned to READ pending legislation or to watch the money exchangers. They are playing the global monopoly game.
Today’s American has fallen victim to reality manipulation through all forms of screen entertainments – from tell-a-vision to computer game addictions. The “science†of visual manipulation is hard core science, and why American people are, in fact, addicted to “screens.†Between the flashing lights, colors, and sound combinations, American people are now literally addicted to computer and tell-a-vision devices. Silence in homes has become virtually impossible to bear, and both children and adults find themselves “virtual slaves†to the electronics in their possession. This addiction was not by accident. This was “science†created to pacify and capture the attention of entire nations so that a new breed of government and governors could take control unnoticed. It worked, and “it†is called mind control.
Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash
If Tesco and Wal-Mart Are Friends of the Earth, Are There Any Enemies Left?
January 25th, 2007Via: Guardian:
You batter your head against the door until you begin to wonder whether it is a door at all. Suddenly it opens, and you find yourself flying through space. The superstores’ green conversion is astonishing, wonderful, disorientating. If Tesco and Wal-Mart have become friends of the earth, are there any enemies left?
America, China, India and South Korea All Adding to Their Oil Reserves
January 24th, 2007HA! Look at the reasons as to why these countries are boosting their reserves. Oh sure, this has nothing to do with Peak Oil!
Tell me another one.
Via: Bloomberg:
George W. Bush’s decision to double the emergency oil stockpile in the U.S. may help to stem a six- month slide in prices as China, India and South Korea also add to demand by bolstering their defenses against shortages.
Oil gained the most since September 2005 yesterday after the U.S. Energy Department said it will boost the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1.5 billion barrels over 20 years. China, where imports rose 15 percent last year, began to fill its reserve in October. India also plans to double its inventories.
The U.S. plan “helps puts a floor in the market,” said Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Fimat USA Inc. in New York. “It creates competition for the same barrels. It tightens the market on top of the strategic reserve builds elsewhere such as China.”
Oil consumers are increasing stockpiles on concern that political instability in the Middle East, terrorism and hurricanes may cause supply disruptions. Governments may buy during dips in prices, supplementing demand growth that’s forecast to slow this year by the International Energy Agency.
Related: Energy Scarcity vs. Cost of the War in Iraq
The Postwar Photographs that British Authorities Tried to Keep Hidden
January 24th, 2007Via: Guardian:
For almost 60 years, the evidence of Britain’s clandestine torture programme in postwar Germany has lain hidden in the government’s files. Harrowing photographs of young men who had survived being systematically starved, as well as beaten, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme cold, were considered too shocking to be seen.
As one minister of the day wrote, as few people as possible should be aware that British authorities had treated prisoners “in a manner reminiscent of the German concentration camps”.
Many other photographs known to have been taken have vanished from the archives, and even this year some government officials were arguing that none should be published.
The pictures show suspected communists who were tortured in an attempt to gather information about Soviet military intentions and intelligence methods at a time when some British officials were convinced that a third world war was only months away.
Others interrogated at the same prison, at Bad Nenndorf, near Hanover, included Nazis, prominent German industrialists of the Hitler era, and former members of the SS.
At least two men suspected of being communists were starved to death, at least one was beaten to death, others suffered serious illness or injuries, and many lost toes to frostbite.
Microsoft Offers Cash for Wikipedia Edit
January 24th, 2007Can’t bribe em’? Just get the crappy browser to declare them a phishing site!
Via: Yahoo/AP:
Microsoft Corp. landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.
While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.
“We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach,” Wales said.
Military Builds Robotic Insects
January 24th, 2007Explosive payloads coming soon.
Via: Wired:
If you feel something crawling on your neck, it might be a wasp or a bee. Or it might be something much more dangerous.
Israel is developing a robot the size of a hornet to attack terrorists. And although the prototype will not fly for three years, killer Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs, are much closer than that.
British Special Forces already use 6-inch MAV aircraft called WASPs for reconnaissance in Afghanistan. The $3,000 WASP is operated with a Gameboy-style controller and is nearly silent, so it can get very close without being detected. A new development will reportedly see the WASP fitted with a C4 explosive warhead for kamikaze attacks on snipers. One newspaper dubbed it “The Talibanator.”
U.S. Sends Second Carrier Group to Persian Gulf, Warns Iran About Trying to Dominate Region
January 24th, 2007I’d like to believe that a group of admirals and generals will say, “Enough. We’re not doing this,” buying the world a bit more time.
But time for what?
Maybe humanity just needs to learn this lesson the hard way. Again.
Via: AP/MyWay:
A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington’s way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said here Tuesday.
Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was “not possible” until Iran halts uranium enrichment.
“The Middle East isn’t a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn’t a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That’s why we’ve seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region,” Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank.
“Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us,” Burns continued.
