Launch Code for U.S. Strategic Nuclear Missiles Was Twelve Zeros Until 1977
June 30th, 2011“But I don’t understand what would be such a big deal if there were a nuclear exchange, only about 500 million people would die…”
Via: Countdown to Zero:
Research Credit: bretwalda
Britain: Council to Force Family Living On Their Own Land and Growing Their Own Food to Live in State Housing and Become Dole Recipients
June 30th, 2011Madness.
Via: This is Devon:
A COUPLE living an “off-grid” lifestyle say they face prison unless they move from their own land in Willand and return to an existence in the benefits trap.
Stig and Dinah Mason bought Muxbeare Orchard after a sudden windfall allowed them to quit their impoverished lives on a Hertfordshire council estate two years ago.
The Masons have transformed what they described as a derelict four-acre plot into a haven of self-sufficiency boasting a 400 sq m allotment, a polytunnel and greenhouses to grow fruit and vegetables, chickens for egg production and an orchard they have regenerated by planting around 14 new apple trees of various species.
The couple, who have two boys, aged eight and nine, say because they moved onto the site in order to work the land, Mid Devon District Council is turfing them off as officers do not consider them to be conserving an agricultural area.
They faced magistrates on March 31 when they were served with an injunction to leave within 28 days from June 1.
Research Credit: tochigi
Cryptogon Readers Sign Up for Hosting with Bluehost
June 29th, 2011Thanks to the owners of spiritofthesunpublications.com and fetalearth.net for signing up for hosting with BlueHost. Cryptogon received $180 as a result.
Methane Contamination of Drinking Water Accompanying Gas-Well Drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing
June 29th, 2011Via: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Directional drilling and hydraulic-fracturing technologies are dramatically increasing natural-gas extraction. In aquifers overlying the Marcellus and Utica shale formations of northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York, we document systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction. In active gas-extraction areas (one or more gas wells within 1 km), average and maximum methane concentrations in drinking-water wells increased with proximity to the nearest gas well and were 19.2 and 64 mg CH4 L-1 (n = 26), a potential explosion hazard…
Research Credit: MakhnosGhost
Florida: Condominium Association Requires DNA Database for Dogs
June 29th, 2011Via: AP:
A Florida condominium association hopes dog DNA samples will help them determine which pet owners aren’t picking up after their pooches.
…
Starting Aug. 1, residents in the Jupiter community must each pay a $200 fee to keep the dogs’ genetic information on file at the DNA Pet World Registry. Dog droppings found in common areas will be collected and mailed to the Tennessee-based company for comparison.
The association’s property manager says any owner whose dog matches the poop sample will be fined up to $1,000 or a lien could be placed on their homes. A dog that’s a persistent problem could be confiscated.
Greece Approve Austerity Measures as Protesters Clash with Police
June 29th, 2011This stream was showing some pretty hairy rioting as I posted this:
Via: Telegraph:
The vote taken amid violent protests and a sense of growing social conflict, will this weekend unlock a £10.7 billion transfer to Greece, the fifth instalment in a £98billion EU-IMF bailout agreed 13 months ago.
At the highest levels anxiety remains behind the warm words of relief that Greece could yet plunge the euro into crisis or crash by going bankrupt on 15 July and defaulting on £3.6 million in debt repayments.
Despite the immediate breathing place given by the vote, EU officials and governments are keenly aware that the battle to save Greece and the euro is not over and that victory is far from being assured.
Visions of Teen Angst, Then and Now
June 29th, 2011When I was a kid, films like Better Off Dead, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and many others, told stories about the seemingly infinite number of ways that being a teenager could suck..
I know these types of films are still made, and while I have no idea what the modern versions are like, my guess is that many of the same stories and stereotypes are being rehashed again and again. Different clothes. Different hair. Different music.
Now, speaking of music, I happen to listen to The Arcade Fire on occasion, and I noticed that they made a short film called, Scenes from the Suburbs, that is based on their album, The Suburbs.
In Scenes from the Suburbs, you might think that it’s going to run along some theme that you’ve seen a dozen times before, and it does, but it’s what’s going on around the characters in the suburbs that will get you to do a double take.
These aren’t the suburbs of the Lane Meyer and Ferris Bueller days. These suburbs are Snowcrash style corporate burbclaves, complete with mercenary armies, shakedowns and worse:
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
June 29th, 2011Thank you.
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‘Flying Lab’ to Monitor Smoke Near New Mexico Nuclear Lab
June 29th, 2011Via: Atlanta Journal Constitution / AP:
Federal environment officials have dispatched a special twin-engine plane capable of detecting chemical and radiological materials as a wildfire continues to burn near a government nuclear laboratory in northern New Mexico.
French Woman Sues Opus Dei, Claims Brainwashing
June 29th, 2011[???]
Via: AFP:
A French woman claiming to have been brainwashed by the secretive Catholic society Opus Dei is suing it for allegedly keeping her illegally as a domestic servant, she told AFP Tuesday.
Catherine T., who asked not to be identified by her family name, said she joined a hoteliers’ school in northeastern France in 1985, aged 14, which she later discovered was run by associates of Opus Dei.
She said she was forced to take vows and made to work as a domestic servant for virtually no pay.
Opus Dei responded in a statement that it was “not involved in the charges being brought” and had “nothing to be guilty about.”
It will be the first ever trial targeting the organisation, branded a sect by some, which came to wide attention after featuring in the blockbuster novel and film “The Da Vinci Code”.
“They assigned me a ‘tutor’ who was actually a kind of conscience instructor,” Catherine told AFP. “I entered into the system…. You were forbidden to talk about it to your parents.”
She said the group compelled her to take vows of obedience, poverty and chastity and for the following 13 years gave her jobs with organisations that her lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut said were linked to Opus Dei.
She said she was made to work 14-hour days, seven days a week, cleaning and serving. Staff paid her a salary and then reclaimed money from her by making her sign blank cheques, supposedly to pay her room and board, she alleged.
She added that staff accompanied her wherever she went, including on visits to the doctor. On these occasions she was taken to see an Opus Dei doctor who prescribed tranquilisers that left her “senseless”.
Catherine weighed only 39 kilogrammes (86 pounds) in 2001 when her parents rescued her from the group. Lawyers first took legal action that year alleging “mental manipulation” among other charges. A nine-year investigation followed.
Two Opus Dei leaders are now summoned to appear in a Paris criminal court on September 22 and 23 on labour law charges of undignified punishment and not declaring her as an employee, lawyers said.
The lawsuit also targets the University and Technical Culture Association (ACUT) which ran the school. It said it had nothing more than a “cultural link” with Opus Dei.
“There is nothing to this case,” said the ACUT’s lawyer, Thierry Laugier, insisting that Catherine T. “was paid according to the work she did.”
