Amazon Dash
April 4th, 2014I, for one, find grocery lists so odious that I need a wi-fi enabled barcode scanner with voice recognition to make sure my whims are catered to immediately.
Can we just cut to the chase and order coffin-sized pods full of lukewarm nutrient agar and neural interfaces?
Via: Amazon:
The “Cuban Twitter” Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket
April 4th, 2014Via: Firstlook:
This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create “a Twitter-like Cuban communications network” run through “secret shell companies” in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service’s Cuban users was the fact that “American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes”–specifically, to manipulate those users in order to foment dissent in Cuba and subvert its government. According to top-secret documents published today by The Intercept, this sort of operation is frequently discussed at western intelligence agencies, which have plotted ways to covertly use social media for ”propaganda,” “deception,” “mass messaging,” and “pushing stories.”
These ideas–discussions of how to exploit the internet, specifically social media, to surreptitiously disseminate viewpoints friendly to western interests and spread false or damaging information about targets–appear repeatedly throughout the archive of materials provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ–and previously published by The Intercept as well as some by NBC News–detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to “discrediting” the agency’s enemies with false information spread online.
The Richest Rich Are in a Class by Themselves
April 4th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
The rallying cry of the Occupy Movement was that the richest 1 percent of Americans is getting richer while the rest of us struggle to get by. That’s not quite right, though. The bottom nine-tenths of the 1 Percent club have about the same slice of the national wealth pie that they had a generation ago. The gains have accrued almost exclusively to the top tenth of 1 Percenters. The richest 0.1 percent of the American population has rebuilt its share of wealth back to where it was in the Roaring Twenties. And the richest 0.01 percent’s share has grown even more rapidly, quadrupling since the eve of the Reagan Revolution.
Supreme Court Allows More Private Money in Election Campaigns
April 4th, 2014Via: CNN:
If you’re rich and want to give money to a lot of political campaigns, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that you can.
The 5-4 ruling eliminated limits on how much money people can donate in total in one election season.
However, the decision left intact the current $5,200 limit on how much an individual can give to any single candidate during a two-year election cycle. Until now, an individual donor could give up to $123,200 per cycle.
The ruling means a wealthy liberal or conservative donor can give as much money as desired to federal election candidates across the country, as long as no candidate receives more than the $5,200 cap.
While most people lack the money to make such a large total donation to election campaigns, the ruling clears the way for more private money to enter the system.
Threatened Pandemics and Laboratory Escapes: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
April 3rd, 2014Via: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:
The public health danger from the escape, from laboratories, of viruses capable of causing pandemics has become the subject of considerable, well-merited discussion, spurred by “gain of function” experiments. The ostensible goal of these experiments— in which researchers manipulate already-dangerous pathogens to create or increase communicability among humans—is to develop tools to monitor the natural emergence of pandemic strains. Opponents, however, warn that the risk of laboratory escape of these high-consequence pathogens far outweighs any potential advance. These arguments appear in a variety of recent research papers, including Rethinking Biosafety in Research on Potential Pandemic Pathogens; The Human Fatality and Economic Burden of a Man-made Influenza Pandemic: A Risk Assessment; Containing the Accidental Laboratory Escape of Potential Pandemic Influenza Viruses; and Response to Letter by the European Society for Virology on “Gain-of-Function” Influenza Research.
The risk of a manmade pandemic sparked by a laboratory escape is not hypothetical: One occurred in 1977, and it occurred because of concern that a natural pandemic was imminent. Many other laboratory escapes of high-consequence pathogens have occurred, resulting in transmission beyond laboratory personnel. Ironically, these laboratories were working with pathogens to prevent the very outbreaks they ultimately caused. For that reason, the tragic consequences have been called “self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Leaders of Teaching Hospitals Have Close Ties to Drug Companies
April 3rd, 2014Via: ProPublica:
Pharmaceutical company payments to doctors extend far beyond rank-and-file clinicians — and deep into the leadership of America’s teaching hospitals, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center examined the boards of the 50 largest drug companies by global sales (excluding three companies that were not publicly traded). The researchers found that 40 percent — 19 companies — had at least one board member who also held a leadership role at an academic medical center. Sixteen of the 17 companies based in the United States had at least one. Several had more than one.
All told, the research team found that 41 of the companies’ 2012 board members held leadership positions at academic medical centers. Six of the 41 were pharmaceutical company executives who served on hospital boards of directors or held other leadership posts.
Excluding the industry executives, the academics earned an average of nearly $313,000 that year for their board service.
DARPA: Biological Technologies Office
April 3rd, 2014I saw this trailer for The Machine a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn’t resist including it with this news from DARPA.
Via: DARPA:
Technology, like biology, constantly evolves. It is DARPA’s mission to stay ahead of the shifting technology curve by making critical, early investments in areas that cut across fields of research and enable revolutionary new capabilities for U.S. national security. Now DARPA is poised to give unprecedented prominence to a field of research that can no longer be considered peripheral to technology’s evolving nature. Starting today, biology takes its place among the core sciences that represent the future of defense technology.
DARPA has created a new division, the Biological Technologies Office (BTO), to explore the increasingly dynamic intersection of biology and the physical sciences. Its goals are to harness the power of biological systems by applying the rigorous tools of engineering and related disciplines, and to design next-generation technologies that are inspired by insights gained from the life sciences.
Terrifying Mental and Physical Health Consequences of Taking Statins
April 1st, 2014Madness.
Via: Mercola:
Related: France: Half of Drugs Prescribed Useless or Dangerous – Statins “Completely Useless”
NATO Suspends Russia Co-Operation
April 1st, 2014Via: BBC:
Nato foreign ministers have agreed to suspend all practical civilian and military co-operation with Russia.
In a strongly worded statement, they condemned Russia’s “illegal” annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and praised the Ukrainian government’s “restraint”.
Moscow is believed to have massed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s eastern border in recent days, causing alarm in Kiev and the West.
Dr. Michael F. Holick Vitamin D Presentation
April 1st, 2014Via: TheIHMC:
