Drugs in parliament

How Many Times Did Police Seize Drugs In Parliament In 2013? - http://huff.to/1dnpyhn

Police Seize Drugs In Parliament Just Once In 2013, FOI Reveals

Asa Bennett   |  31 Dec 2013Police have seized drugs just once in the last year on the Parliamentary estate after someone was caught in possession of cannabis, a Freedom of Information request from the Huffington Post UK reveals.The cannabis seizure took place on 25 March 2013 at Parliament's Cromwell Green Entrance, according to records from the Met's SO17 division, which guard the Parliamentary estate. Cromwell Green Entrance, where the drug seizure happened on 25 March 2013 (Note: This is just to illustrate. None of the people in shot are implicated)The fact that drugs were seized just once in the last year may be surprising given recent revelations about the interest in illegal drug sites on Parliament's computer network. However, this could suggest either the Metropolitan police are keeping Parliament drug-free or some people are successfully smuggling drugs into and around the Parliamentary estate. See also: Legal Highs Insider Midas On How New Drugs Took Off In BritainThe fact that evidence of cocaine use was found inside the toilets at the Houses of Parliament in Junesuggests that drug users may be getting away with it under the nose of the police. As a Class B drug, anyone found in possession of cannabis will have it confiscated by police and likely be placed under arrest. However, the Met Police did not disclose what happened after the cannabis was seized in the March incident.ALSO ON HUFFPOSTVIDEOReport Shows U.K. Parliament Rife With Porn Use

3D

http://goo.gl/news/klSR
HomeWorld NewsUK ShowbizFemailSportUS HomeUS ShowbizHealthSci & TechVideoMoneyTravelDesktop SiteScience

The future of cooking? PRINT your dinner: Don't scoff - but now 3D printers can make food

By Tom Rawstorne23:27 27 Dec 2013, updated 10:31 28 Dec 2013FacebookTwitterClick to openGoogle PlusEmailClick to close253shares3commentsThe Foodini is a 3D printer which eliminated the need to cookThe printer is set to go on sale in Britain for £835 next yearTom Rawsthorne tried out a three-course meal made by the FoodiniFor my starter, I have a potato lattice filled with cod and pureed peas — a nouvelle cuisine take on fish, chips and mushy peas, if you like.The main course is more traditional; a good old burger in a bun, followed by a delightful-looking cheesecake accompanied with a hand-made chocolate decoration.While it’s a meal that most competent chefs would no doubt be able to turn out, I’d wager that not even Nigella Lawson would have had as much fun making it as I’ve just had.Scroll down for videoDinner is printed: Tom Rawsthorne gets ready to tuck in to his three-course Foodini 3D mealBecause all the food in front of me has been produced by a 3D printer. That’s right. A machine has done all the hard work. All I have to do is heat my food up once it has been created.That statement takes a minute to digest, doesn’t it? But those behind this extraordinary invention, known as the Foodini, believe it is set to change the way we prepare food for ever.

MORE...

Not sure this would work with the Christmas turkey... the 3D food printer that lets you create and eat your meal from freshly squeezed syringesIs this the best 3D printer ever? Machine creates an exact replica of your face made from CHOCOLATE‘This is much more than just a gimmick,’ says Lynette Kucsma, whose company Natural Machines plans to have the printer on general sale in British shops by the middle of next year. ‘The last revolution in the kitchen came with the microwave — we believe that the Foodini could be about to transform the preparation of food to the same extent.’It’s certainly a beguiling concept. Fancy a freshly made pizza? Just print one.Having tapped in your menu choice on a touch screen, you sit back and watch as the machine prints out a perfect circle of dough, which is then automatically covered with a layer of tomato sauce followed by a cheese topping. If you can stomach it...see ravioli, pizza and burgers printedWork in progress: The Foodini makes a hamburger for Tom at the machine's factory in BarcelonaTucking in: All Tom has to do once the hamburger has been 'printed' is cook it and eatNo shaping of the base, no flour everywhere, no spilt sauce — all you have to do is put the finished item in the oven and cook it for ten minutes.Or how about something fiddly like ravioli? Again, simply select the food type on the screen and within a matter of minutes it will have laid down a base of pasta dough, followed by a filling which is encased in a top layer of pasta.The process is repeated over and over again for each individual parcel. All the person eating it has to do next is heat it up in the oven, microwave or, in some cases, on the stove.The machine’s ability to exactly replicate complicated designs also gives it other unexpected advantages over traditionally prepared food.‘I have two children aged five and three who aren’t keen on their greens,’ explains Lynette, an American, married to a Spaniard, who previously worked in Microsoft’s marketing and PR department. ‘So I took the machine home and printed them a spinach quiche. I did it in the shape of a dinosaur for my son and a butterfly for my daughter. They loved it and ate it all up.‘It had the same ingredients as a quiche that they normally wouldn’t touch, but the different shape was a game changer.’Of course, if we are to believe the hype, then 3D printing is set to be a game changer across all walks of life. Instead of scouring the High Street for consumer goods — anything from shoes to washing machine spare parts — we’ll soon be printing them out ourselves at home.In 2011, the world’s first printed car rolled off the presses. More worryingly, earlier this year, the first printed gun was successfully fired.  Researchers are even experimenting with stem cells, raising the prospect that, in future, organs could be ‘printed off’ for patients awaiting a transplant. The technology is already being used to build arteries, ears and teeth.Beat that McDonald's: The bread and the patty has been printed, but the salad and tomato is freshUnlike everyday printers, the 3D versions create objects by laying down layer after layer of plastic, metal or whatever material is required. The Foodini works on exactly the same principle.Although I only get to use a basic prototype at Foodini’s Spanish headquarters in Barcelona, the version that will hit the streets next year is roughly the size of a microwave.Its sleek design will hide all the working parts, but users will be able to look in and watch as the ingredients are automatically pumped through the ‘extruder’, or nozzle.The shapes it forms — and the quantities emitted — are controlled by a computer.The Foodini can hold five capsules, each potentially containing a different ingredient (in much the same way a normal printer has cartridges containing different coloured ink).As and when each ingredient is required, the computer automatically switches from one capsule to another and then pumps their contents through the extruder.The Foodini does not cook the food, so once the item has been completed it would then have to be baked, boiled or fried before eating.So, for example, someone wanting to eat a lasagne would simply choose the item on the computerised display and load up three capsules as specified — one with meat, one with white sauce and one with pasta dough.A layer of meat would be pumped into an oven-proof tray on top of which would be overlayed a layer of pasta followed by a layer of white sauce. This process would be repeated until the required height was achieved. It would then have to be transferred into the oven to be cooked.The original idea was that anyone buying the Foodini would only be able to purchase the food capsules pre-packaged with ingredients, which they would then insert into the machine.But after some deep thinking, it was decided it would be better to allow users also to load their own fresh ingredients into the capsules at home.Lynette explains how the concept evolved: ‘One of the company’s co-founders, Rosa Avellaneda, owns a bakery in Barcelona,’ she says. ‘Rosa realised that a lot of the cost in a traditional bakery is to do with manufacturing and distribution.For afters: The Daily Mail dessert with a special 2014 chocolate decoration made by the Foodini‘Raw materials account only for 20 per cent of the cost of the final product. So that was where the original idea for Foodini came from — we would sell the machine and the capsules that went with it, aiming particularly at the cake and sweet market.’But it became clear that if the capsules were pre-packaged, they’d have to contain preservatives to give them shelf life. Lynette and her partners in the business were not keen on this. Because while the machine is undeniably high-tech, they have always wanted it to be part of the home-cooking, healthy-eating movement.‘Making your own food is obviously better, but it does require more time from you in the kitchen compared with opening a bag or box of something processed, frozen or already prepared,’ she says. ‘Foodini takes on those parts of preparing food that are hard or time-consuming to make by hand, and which you may otherwise tend to buy as a “convenience” food.‘One of our goals is to streamline some of cooking’s more repetitive activities — forming dough into breadsticks, or filling and forming individual ravioli — to encourage more people to eat healthy, home-made meals. You prepare the fresh ingredients and load them into Foodini’s food capsules and watch Foodini print your chosen recipe.’But if people are prepared to go to all the effort of making the contents of the capsules themselves, then why not finish off the job by hand?Take the burger I’m about to tuck in to. Before it can be made, the dough for the bread has to be made and mixed to a consistency that allows it to be pumped out of the extruder. The same goes for the mince for the patty.Mouthful: Tom tries out the dainty 3D printed hamburger, with he patty, cheese and bun made by the FoodiniReady to eat: The three course meal, all prepared by a 3D printer, is ready for Tom to tuck inEach must then be cooked separately. Given that the finishing touches like the tomato and lettuce have to be done manually, wouldn’t it be easier to do it all by hand?‘Maybe if you are doing one burger, but not if you are doing a whole load,’ suggests Lynette.A stronger argument, it seems to me, can be made for the more fiddly designs. Take my starter.At the press of a button, the machine silently moves into action, quickly creating a lattice of hexagons using mashed potato. The gaps are then individually filled with either pureed peas or a cod filling. The dish looks and tastes great. The same goes for the pudding — particularly the chocolate accompaniment, which spells out the year 2014 in a design the Foodini takes just over a minute to create.More incredible still is a six-inch-high Christmas tree it made, its delicate branches also made of chocolate. One can imagine a highfalutin restaurant that has to produce dozens of identical, intricate dishes being very interested in the machine’s precision.So, who is likely to buy a Foodini when it hits the market? At an expected cost of £835 it’s not cheap, but then neither is a top-of-the-range coffee maker nor a food blender.‘There’s a queue wanting to buy it from more than 30 countries around the world,’ says Lynette. ‘That interest comes from a wide range of people, from individual consumers at home to Michelin-starred chefs. We have also been contacted by those who want to set up restaurants that sell only 3D printed foods.’Once launched, the aim is to link all users via an online community, allowing them to share tips and recipes. Because the machines will be linked to the internet, new food items can be added to the menu at any time.So fast forward 12 months and — who knows? — the Foodini could be taking the strain of those fiddly party canapes, those endless mince pies, and even an intricate festive decoration on top of your Christmas cake.As for the main event — turkey and all the trimmings — that’s likely to keep the computer whizz-kids scratching their beards for a  few more years yet.FacebookTwitterClick to openGoogle PlusEmailClick to close253shares3comments

JUMP TO...

HomeShowbizFemailSport

NEXT STORIES1/30

How where you're from affects memory: Americans recall objects better while East Asians are more likely to remember peopleWhy do zebras have stripes? Distinctive markings create an optical illusion that dazzles predators and masks movementThe rover that will BOUNCE across Titan: Nasa’s collapsible Super Ball Bot could help explore Saturn’s hazy moonHumans hunt like SHARKS: Hunter-gatherers forage for food in a mathematical pattern used by other predatorsStroke survivor learns to walk again thanks to revolutionary bionic leg which PREDICTS her movementsScientists create glow-in-the-dark PIGS after injecting them with jellyfish DNACould you be the government’s next hacking expert? Cyber Security Challenge launches a series of mind-bending puzzles with MailOnline to uncover the next generation of codebreakersHow Facebook reveals human migration: User data shows London, Lagos and Istanbul are among the top places to relocateHow a book really can change your life: Brain function improves for DAYS after reading a novelDawn of the remote-controlled SHIP: Massive crewless vessels could soon set sail to save money and improve safety at seaDiamonds believed to be 4.3billion years old turn out to be polishing grit used by scientists to clean crystalsWhy pillow talk matters: Chatting immediately after sex makes couples feel closer and more secure, claims scientistAre you hooked on the internet? Regular surfers can exhibit symptoms usually seen in DRUG ADDICTSForget toy trucks and cars! Young boys prefer playing with DOLLS, claims studySpace station astronauts fix damaged cooling system in rare Christmas Eve spacewalkGoogle 'heatmap' reveals New York, Rome and Barcelona as the most photographed places on EarthArtificial life comes a step closer: Virtual worm wriggles after scientists use computer code to give it musclesDaily Mail makes Google's Zeitgeist List after it's revealed to be the UK's 8th most searched for term of 2013Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived in MILE END: Census reveals the unusual festive family names to be found in the UKDo you have two left feet? £120 smart SOCKS can teach anyone how to danceWant people to be nicer to you? STOP wearing deodorant: Bad body odour makes others more generous and supportiveThe gadget that tells you when you're TIRED: Wearable device analyses your body movements to prevent a road accidentIs this the best 3D printer ever? Machine creates an exact replica of your face made from CHOCOLATENever burn your mouth with coffee again! £20 mug ensures your drink is never piping – but keeps it warm for three hours tooDid Neanderthals speak like US? Horseshoe-shaped neck bone suggests ancestors used complex speechMake sure your champers is chilled this Christmas! Warm bubbly corks launch 36% faster - and could take out your eyeWhy Rudolf really is the red-nosed reindeer: Scientists find animal's glowing nostrils may be more than a fictional feature21st century bird watching: Drone guide lets sky gazers spot flying military robots using their silhouettesCould Silicon Valley become a U.S. state? Billionaire venture capitalist wants independence for the tech hub so it can set its own lawsNasa delays second spacewalk to repair ISS after build-up of water is found inside a spacesuit

Rw

http://admin.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/right-wing-filled-biblical-illiterates?akid=11309.1876867.gmzkAS&rd=1&src=newsletter940206&t=3

Right-Wing Is Filled with Biblical Illiterates: They'd Be Shocked by Jesus' Teachings if They Ever Picked Up a Bible

Jesus wouldn't have supported food stamps?616 COMMENTS616 COMMENTSAAAEmailPrintdiggTweet  diggTweetDecember 23, 2013  |   Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly defended the Republican Party’s spending cuts for SNAP by effectively declaring Jesus would not support food stamps for the poor because most them are drug addicts. If his insensitive remark is inconsistent with Scripture, which it is, then the question becomes why do talking heads on the right get away with proclaiming what Jesus would or wouldn’t support?The answer is simple: Conservatives have not read the Bible.The Right has successfully rebranded the brown-skinned liberal Jew, who gave away free healthcare and was pro-redistributing wealth, into a white-skinned, trickledown, union-busting conservative, for the very fact that an overwhelming number of Americans are astonishingly illiterate when it comes to understanding the Bible. On hot-button social issues, from same-sex marriage to abortion, biblical passages are invoked without any real understanding of the context or true meaning. It’s surprising how little Christians know of what is still the most popular book to ever grace the American continent.More than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one copy of the Bible. So how much do Americans know of the book that one-third of the country believes to be literally true? Apparently, very little, according to data from the Barna Research group. Surveys show that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a biblical verse.So, if Americans get an F in the basic fundamentals of the Bible, what hope do they have in knowing what Jesus would say about labor unions, taxes on the rich, universal healthcare, and food stamps? It becomes easy to spread a lie when no one knows what the truth is.The truth, whether Republicans like it or not, is not only that Jesus a meek and mild liberal Jew who spoke softly in parables and metaphors, but conservatives were the ones who had him killed. American conservatives, however, have morphed Jesus into a muscular masculine warrior, in much the same way the Nazis did, as a means of combating what they see as the modernization of society.Author Thom Hartmann writes, “A significant impetus behind the assault on women and modernity was the feeling that women had encroached upon traditional male spheres like the workplace and colleges. Furthermore, women’s leadership in the churches had harmed Christianity by creating an effeminate clergy and a weak sense of self. All of this was associated with liberalism, feminism, women, and modernity.”It’s almost absurd to speculate what Jesus’ positions would be on any single issue, given we know so little about who Jesus was. Knowing the New Testament is not simply a matter of reading the Bible cover to cover, or memorizing a handful of verses. Knowing the Bible requires a scholarly contextual understanding of authorship, history and interpretation.For instance, when Republicans were justifying their cuts to the food stamp program, they quoted 2 Thessalonians: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” One poll showed that more than 90 percent of Christians believe this New Testament quote is attributed to Jesus. It’s not. This was taken from a letter written by Paul to his church in Thessalonica. Paul wrote to this specific congregation to remind them that if they didn't help build the church in Thessalonica, they wouldn’t be paid. The letter also happens to be a fraud. Surprise! Biblical scholars agree it’s a forgery written by someone pretending to be Paul.

»

Atheism challenges

The people who challenged my atheism most weren't priests, but homeless addicts and prostitutes | Chris Arnade http://gu.com/p/3yeag
The people who challenged my atheism most weren't priests, but homeless addicts and prostitutes | Chris Arnade

I've been reminded that life is not as rational as Richard Dawkins sees it. Perhaps atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthyPhotograph: Chris ArnadeChris ArnadeTue 24 December 2013They prayed whenever they could find 15 minutes. "Preacher Man", as we called him, would read from the Bible with his tiny round glasses. It was the only book he had ever read. A dozen or so others would listen, silently praying while stroking rosaries, sitting on bare mattresses, crammed into a half-painted dorm room.I was the outsider, a 16-year-old working on a summer custodial crew for a local college, saving money to pay for my escape from my hometown. The other employees, close to three dozen, were working to feed themselves, to feed their kids, to pay child support, to pay for the basics of life. I was the only white, everyone else was African-American.Preacher Man tried to get me to join the prayer meetings, asking me almost daily. I declined, preferring to spend those small work breaks with some of the other guys on the crew. We would use the time to snatch a quick drink or maybe smoke a joint.Preacher Man would question me, "What do you believe in?" I would decline to engage, out of politeness. He pressed me. Finally I broke,I am an atheist. I don't believe in a God. I don't think the world is only 5,000 years old, I don't think Cain and Abel married their sisters!Preacher Man's eyes narrowed. He pointed at me, "You are an APE-IEST. An APE-IEST. You going to lead a life of sin and end in hell."Three years later I did escape my town, eventually receiving a PhD in physics, and then working on Wall Street for 20 years. A life devoted to rational thought, a life devoted to numbers and clever arguments.During that time I counted myself an atheist and nodded in agreement as a wave of atheistic fervor swept out of the scientific community and into the media, led by Richard Dawkins.I saw some of myself in him: quick with arguments, uneasy with emotions, comfortable with logic, able to look at any ideology or any thought process and expose the inconsistencies. We all picked on the Bible, a tome cobbled together over hundreds of years that provides so many inconsistencies. It is the skinny 85lb (35.6kg) weakling for anyone looking to flex their scientific muscles.I eventually left my Wall Street job and started working with andphotographing homeless addicts in the South Bronx. When I first walked into the Bronx I assumed I would find the same cynicism I had towards faith. If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be.None of them are. Rather they are some of the strongest believers I have met, steeped in a combination of Bible, superstition, and folklore.The first addict I met was Takeesha. She was standing near the high wall of the Corpus Christi Monastery. We talked for close to an hour before I took her picture. When we finished, I asked her how she wanted to be described. She said without any pause, "As who I am. A prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God."Takeesha was raped by a relative when she was 11. Her mother, herself a prostitute, put Takeesha out on the streets at 13, where she has been for the last 30 years,It's sad when it's your mother, who you trust, and she was out there with me, but you know what kept me through all that? God. Whenever I got into the car, God got into the car with me.Sonya and Eric, heroin addicts who are homeless, have a picture of the Last Supper that moves with them. It has hung in an abandoned building, it has hung in a sewage-filled basement, and now it leans against the pole in the small space under the interstate where they live.A picture of the Last Supper hanging in a crack house in New York. Photograph: Chris ArnadeSarah, 15 years on the streets, wears a cross around her neck. Always. Michael, 30 years on the streets, carries a rosary in his pocket. Always. In any crack house, in the darkest buildings empty of all other furnishings, a worn Bible can be found laying flat amongst needles, caps, lighters, and crack pipes.Takeesha and the other homeless addicts are brutalized by a system driven by a predatory economic rationalism (a term used recently by J. M. Coetzee in his essay: On Nelson Mandela). They are viewed by the public and seen by almost everyone else as losers. Just "junkie prostitutes" who live in abandoned buildings.They have their faith because what they believe in doesn't judge them. Who am I to tell them that what they believe is irrational? Who am I to tell them the one thing that gives them hope and allows them to find some beauty in an awful world is inconsistent? I cannot tell them that there is nothing beyond this physical life. It would be cruel and pointless.In these last three years, out from behind my computers, I have been reminded that life is not rational and that everyone makes mistakes. Or, in Biblical terms, we are all sinners.We are all sinners. On the streets the addicts, with their daily battles and proximity to death, have come to understand this viscerally. Many successful people don't. Their sense of entitlement and emotional distance has numbed their understanding of our fallibility.Sonya with her cross and rosary. Photograph: Chris ArnadeSoon I saw my atheism for what it is: an intellectual belief most accessible to those who have done well.I look back at my 16-year-old self and see Preacher Man and his listeners differently. I look at the fragile women praying and see a mother working a minimum wage custodial job, trying to raise three children alone. Her children's father off drunk somewhere. I look at the teenager fingering a small cross and see a young woman, abused by a father addicted to whatever, trying to find some moments of peace. I see Preacher Man himself, living in a beat up shack without electricity, desperate to stay clean, desperate to make sense of a world that has given him little.They found hope where they could.I want to go back to that 16-year-old self and tell him to shut up with the "see how clever I am attitude". I want to tell him to appreciate how easy he had it, with a path out. A path to riches.I also see Richard Dawkins differently. I see him as a grown up version of that 16-year-old kid, proud of being smart, unable to understand why anyone would believe or think differently from himself. I see a person so removed from humanity and so removed from the ambiguity of life that he finds himself judging those who think differently.I see someone doing what he claims to hate in others. Preaching from a selfish vantage point.© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.▼

Foodbank

Christmas Food Bank Use Triples In One Year

PA/The Huffington Post UK   |  25 Dec 2013The number of people using food banks this Christmas has tripled compared to last year, according to a charity which runs 400 across the UK.Over the two weeks leading up to Christmas Day, the Trussell Trust estimates that its food banks have fed 60,000 people, of which one third were children. During the same period last year, it fed 20,000 people.Food banks have shot up the political agenda after a Commons debate highlighted the huge rise in demand for their services, and exposed the deep political divisions on the issue.Foodbank volunteer John Mills (C) talks to two young men collecting their emergency food donation at the Rochdale FoodbankLabour MP Frank Field, chairman of the all party parliamentary group on hunger, food and poverty, said the Commons debate was "like a football match" and that "there were no meetings of minds".Field has repeatedly called on Prime Minister David Cameron to launch an inquiry into the rising demand for food banks.The MP for Birkenhead said: "Food banks are an indicator of just how grim it is at the bottom."Here we are fumbling around trying to say what the problem is. We need to raise our game about the solution."We are in unchartered territory. I don't think there is any quick fix."Since April, over half a million people have used Trussell Trust food banks, which is triple the number for the same period last year.Based on these figures, the charity estimates that about three times as many people will have used their services over the Christmas period too.Chris Mould, executive chairman of the Trussell Trust, said: "It is not a surprise that three times more people have used our services this Christmas compared to last."It is very distressing and very worrying that people don't have a decent enough income to be able to support themselves and find food on Christmas."For people who are on low incomes, this Christmas will be much tougher than last. Prices for food, gas, electricity, have gone up above inflation consistently throughout the year."Mould said the coalition Government's welfare and tax reforms were partly to blame for the increasing amount of people who are turning to food banks.However, a Government spokesman said: "There is no robust evidence that welfare reforms are linked to increased use of food banks."The benefits system supports millions of people who are on low incomes or unemployed."In fact, our welfare reforms will improve the lives of some of the poorest families in our communities with the Universal Credit making three million households better off - the majority of these from the bottom two-fifths of the income scale."The Trussell Trust itself says it is opening three new food banks every week, so it's not surprising more people are using them. They also agree that awareness has helped to explain their recent growth."The Government has taken action to help families with the cost of living, including increasing the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 which will save a typical taxpayer over £700, freezing council tax for five years and freezing fuel duty."ALSO ON HUFFPOSTVIDEOFood Bank Hands Out 125 Turkeys to Families in Need

Christmas Food Bank Use Triples In Just ONE YEAR - http://huff.to/1d7NSDO

Home

http://www.nationswell.com/one-state-track-become-first-end-homelessness-2015/

Kiss ô death

http://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/

The Gift of Death

December 10, 2012

1.3KPathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it.By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th December 2012There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub holder; a “hilarious” inflatable zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World wall map.They seem amusing on the first day of Christmas, daft on the second, embarrassing on the third. By the twelfth they’re in landfill. For thirty seconds of dubious entertainment, or a hedonic stimulus that lasts no longer than a nicotine hit, we commission the use of materials whose impacts will ramify for generations.Researching her film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard discovered that of the materials flowing through the consumer economy, only 1% remain in use six months after sale(1). Even the goods we might have expected to hold onto are soon condemned to destruction through either planned obsolescence (breaking quickly) or perceived obsolesence (becoming unfashionable).But many of the products we buy, especially for Christmas, cannot become obsolescent. The term implies a loss of utility, but they had no utility in the first place. An electronic drum-machine t-shirt; a Darth Vader talking piggy bank; an ear-shaped i-phone case; an individual beer can chiller; an electronic wine breather; a sonic screwdriver remote control; bacon toothpaste; a dancing dog: no one is expected to use them, or even look at them, after Christmas Day. They are designed to elicit thanks, perhaps a snigger or two, and then be thrown away.The fatuity of the products is matched by the profundity of the impacts. Rare materials, complex electronics, the energy needed for manufacture and transport are extracted and refined and combined into compounds of utter pointlessness. When you take account of the fossil fuels whose use we commission in other countries, manufacturing and consumption are responsible for more than half of our carbon dioxide production(2). We are screwing the planet to make solar-powered bath thermometers and desktop crazy golfers.People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility(3). Forests are felled to make “personalised heart-shaped wooden cheese board sets”. Rivers are poisoned to manufacture talking fish. This is pathological consumption: a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us.In 2007, the journalist Adam Welz records, 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa. This year, so far, 585 have been shot(4). No one is entirely sure why. But one answer is that very rich people in Vietnam are now sprinkling ground rhino horn on their food or snorting it like cocaine to display their wealth. It’s grotesque, but it scarcely differs from what almost everyone in industrialised nations is doing: trashing the living world through pointless consumption.This boom has not happened by accident. Our lives have been corralled and shaped in order to encourage it. World trade rules force countries to participate in the festival of junk. Governments cut taxes, deregulate business, manipulate interest rates to stimulate spending. But seldom do the engineers of these policies stop and ask “spending on what?”. When every conceivable want and need has been met (among those who have disposable money), growth depends on selling the utterly useless. The solemnity of the state, its might and majesty, are harnessed to the task of delivering Terry the Swearing Turtle to our doors.Grown men and women devote their lives to manufacturing and marketing this rubbish, and dissing the idea of living without it. “I always knit my gifts”, says a woman in a television ad for an electronics outlet. “Well you shouldn’t,” replies the narrator(5). An advertisement for Google’s latest tablet shows a father and son camping in the woods. Their enjoyment depends on the Nexus 7’s special features(6). The best things in life are free, but we’ve found a way of selling them to you.The growth of inequality that has accompanied the consumer boom ensures that the rising economic tide no longer lifts all boats. In the US in 2010 a remarkable 93% of the growth in incomes accrued to the top 1% of the population(7). The old excuse, that we must trash the planet to help the poor, simply does not wash. For a few decades of extra enrichment for those who already possess more money than they know how to spend, the prospects of everyone else who will live on this earth are diminished.So effectively have governments, the media and advertisers associated consumption with prosperity and happiness that to say these things is to expose yourself to opprobrium and ridicule. Witness last week’s Moral Maze programme, in which most of the panel lined up to decry the idea of consuming less, and to associate it, somehow, with authoritarianism(8). When the world goes mad, those who resist are denounced as lunatics.Bake them a cake, write them a poem, give them a kiss, tell them a joke, but for god’s sake stop trashing the planet to tell someone you care. All it shows is that you don’t.www.monbiot.com1. http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/2. It’s 57%. See http://www.monbiot.com/2010/05/05/carbon-graveyard/3. See the film Blood in the Mobile. http://bloodinthemobile.org/4. http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_dirty_war_against_africas_remaining_rhinos/2595/5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7VE2wlDkr8&list=UU25QbTq58EYBGf2_PDTqzFQ&index=96. http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/07/commercial-for-googles-nexus-7-tablet-revealed/7. Emmanuel Saez, 2nd March 2012. Striking it Richer: the Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010 estimates). http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf8. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p424r‘Bug-Splats’ →← The Unsung WorldSite by Borderleft© 2013 George Monbiot

#islam #christianity #Sacrilegesunday #atheism #religionpoisonseverything #Bronzeagebollocks #bible #Quran 

#islam
#christianity
#Sacrilegesunday
#atheism
#religionpoisonseverything
#Bronzeagebollocks
#bible #Quran


Électrique

It's On: Oil Versus Electric - http://huff.to/1cHjsrP
It's On: Oil Versus Electric

Something suspicious is going on in the media coverage of car fires this year. Three Tesla Model S cars caught on fire this year, all due to high-speed impacts. Not a single person was hurt.

By comparison, the U.S.A. has had more than 250,000 gasoline car fires in the past year and a half. Those gasoline car fires resulted in over 400 deaths and 1,200 serious injuries. (extrapolating 2012 NFPA data)

Which fires did the media decide to focus on? Which fires generated more headlines than all the others combined? The three Tesla fires that resulted in a grand total of zero deaths and zero serious injuries, of course.

Seems a bit strange, doesn't it? I think so, too. Perhaps I am paying more attention, because I am one of the 19,000 people on Earth that are driving a Tesla Model S, a car that has received the highest safety rating possible. It is the safest car in America, or anywhere else in the world: There have been zero deaths or serious injuries in a Tesla Model S worldwide due to a fire, or any other accident.

But, based on the number of headlines, three fires with no injuries provoked, I can't help but feel like there are other powers at work here.

Let's step back and look at the big picture. Up until now, there has been no serious threat to the world domination of the oil industry and the internal combustion engine. It's a system we have been forced to use because of the simple fact that there has been, until now, no other choice. Enter a brilliant young entrepreneur - who also happens to be a rocket scientist - who creates a compelling and sexy electric car that goes on to win every award under the sun.

There is so much excitement around the Tesla Model S that it is not uncommon for me to come out of the grocery store in North Carolina and find people in the parking lot taking photos of my car. Earlier this year, Tesla made headlines when the Model S became the first car in history to win Motor Trend Car of the Year by unanimous vote. Then Consumer Reports called it the best car they ever tested and gave it a score of 99/100. In May, Tesla wired nearly $500 million to the government and became the only American car company to fully pay back their government loan. Oh, and by the way, they did it nine years early, with interest - $25 million in interest, in fact, back to the taxpayers. Ouch, I bet that goes down like a jagged little pill in the boardrooms of certain other car manufacturers.

Tesla is rocking the boat. What started as a ripple has now become a wave and the boat they are rocking is so enormous in its domination, some may have thought it to be unsinkable. They are rocking it in a way that is making people uncomfortable, especially the people who are heavily invested in it.

So now ask yourself these questions: What happens when a start up car company is outselling their competitors without placing a single ad? What happens when the public has so much confidence in a company that the stock is up more than 300% this year, and was up over 400% before the media went nuts with these headlines about the three fires? What happens when two of the most powerful industries in the world - oil and the established car industry - feel threatened for the first time?

In this country, the gigantic, powerful entity we call Big Oil made $51.5 billion in the second quarter of 2013. $51.5 billion in three months. Think about that number and then consider the internal combustion engine based car industry sold over 14 million cars in the USA last year. These two giants have been in bed with each other for a century: "You drill for the oil, and we'll make the cars. Together, we'll make a fortune. Even if the people hate us, they will have to use our products because they will have no other choice."

And now a little start up company named Tesla has come along and threatened all of that. We didn't expect these antiquated allies to go down without a fight. It's on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leilani-munter/its-on-oil-vs-electric_b_4423011.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

http://multiversalist.blogspot.co.uk/2013_02_01_archive.html

Foodbank

http://rt.com/news/uk-refuses-eu-help-467/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=aplication_chrome&utm_campaign=chrome

onflict, Crisis, Health, Human rights, Laura Smith, Politics, Polly Boiko, Protest, Rory Suchet, UK
Britain’s Conservative government is facing a wave of criticism for refusing up to $36 million in EU food aid. The decision has prompted accusations the government is sacrificing the needs of the poor in favor of championing an “anti-EU ideology.”

Earlier this week UK officials declined an offer from Brussels for a donation from the European Union’s billion-dollar aid fund. The money would have been channeled into financing food banks which have become more and more widespread across the UK since the onset of the economic crisis.

PM David Cameron’s government maintained that such aid would be better administered by Britain itself.

“Measures of this type are better and more efficiently delivered by individual member states through their own social programs, and their regional and local authorities, who are best placed to identify and meet the needs of deprived people in their countries and communities,” the Department of Work and Pensions said in a statement leaked to The Guardian.

Cameron’s government faced a barrage of criticism from the opposition Labour Party following the decision.

“In Britain we’ve got a government with a very anti-European ideology that seems more keen to not want the EU to get credit for something, than to get money that can help to feed hungry people,” Labour MEP Richard Howitt told RT correspondent Laura Smith. “If you are starving, you need some food on your plate today, and this government’s decision to refuse EU cash is literally taking food out of the mouths of the hungry.”

Instead of accepting up to 22 million pounds ($36 million), the UK has opted for a 2.9 million pound ($4.7 million) handout. However, this money will not be spent on food banks, but instead it will be invested in a push to help the unemployed find jobs.

In a climate of economic crisis, the UK’s food banks are becoming more widely used as people struggle to make ends meet as the cost of living rises. The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) released an annual report at the beginning of December showing that incomes had fallen in the UK by $2,600 in real terms since May 2000.

In contrast, living costs have been on the up, with energy bills set to increase by up to 10 percent. Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major spoke out against the increase, calling it unacceptable that some would have to make the choice between “heating and eating.”

The Labour Party has called on the government to take measures to reduce the use of food banks in the country. In a House of Commons debate Wednesday, Shadow Environment Secretary Maria Eagle said that 500,000 people, a third of them children, have used food banks since April 2013.

‘Humiliating’

Charities have also ratcheted up aid going to food banks, where 90 percent of the food is provided through citizen donations.

“As a humanitarian organization we are more and more concerned about people suffering from food poverty within our services,” Juliet Mountford, Director of UK Service Development at the British Red Cross, told RT. The Red Cross has announced the launch of the first emergency food aid plan since WWII in the light of rising poverty in the UK.

Andrew Fullik, a food bank user, spoke to RT about his situation, describing it as “humiliating” that he has had to claim food aid six times in the last 18 months.

“I felt as though I'd had the rug pulled from beneath my feet. I had to go to someone else to try and help me survive. And it's not a nice feeling. I nearly ended up in tears... I nearly ended up a nervous wreck,” he told RT correspondent Polly Boiko.

Delete

 
How To Erase Yourself From The Internet

Who knew a page full of links could be so useful?

JustDelete.me is a page full of links -- not ugly blue hyperlinks but links disguised as buttons. Each button represents an online service; anything from LinkedIn to Skype to Wikipedia.

http://justdelete.me/

Click a button and JustDelete.me will take you to the page on that online service that allows you to delete your account. If you click the "show info" link under each button, meanwhile, JustDelete.me will tell you, in plain English, how to delete your account from that site.

Buttons are color-coded: a green button means deleting your account is easy, a yellow button means it's moderately difficult, red means it's hard and black (uh-oh) means "it's impossible to delete your account on this site."

Turns out some sites love your data so much they won't remove it. Ever.

In addition to its primary purpose of teaching people how to delete their accounts -- and serving as a one-stop shop for people who want to pare down their online presence -- JustDelete.me publicly shames services that don't let users remove their data. And for those who haven't yet created eternal accounts on these types of sites, including Netflix, Pinterest or Pastebin, JustDelete.me serves as a warning that some sites will never let you go.

JustDelete.me was created by Robb Lewis, a UK-based developer frustrated by the lack of transparency offered in online service deletions. "After seeing a few tweets about how difficult it can be to delete your Skype account and then hearing that Netflix flat-out won’t delete your details I decided to build JustDelete.me," Lewis writes on his blog. Lewis is currently taking suggestions for sites to add to JustDelete.me; he can be emailed or contacted on Twitter here.

[h/t LifeHacker]
http://justdelete.me/

Nsa

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2081140/german-coalition-favors-germanowned-or-open-source-software-aims-to-lock-nsa-out.html

 
German coalition favors German-owned or open source software, aims to lock NSA out

Loek Essers@loekessersDec 17, 2013 8:25 AMprintGermany’s new coalition government listed open source software among its IT policy priorities, and said it will take steps to protect its citizens against espionage threats from the NSA and other foreign intelligence agencies.Coalition parties CDU, CSU and SPD signed up to the plans Monday in Berlin.The new government’s goal is to keep core technologies, including IT security, process and enterprise software, cryptography and machine-to-machine communication on proprietary technology platforms and production lines in Germany or in Europe, according to the coalition agreement.But the government will also promote the use and development of open platforms and open source software as an alternative to closed proprietary systems, and will support the use of those in Europe, the parties said in the agreement. The public sector will need to consider open source solutions as a possibility when purchasing new IT, they said.They also want to compete on a global level with “software made in Germany” and strengthen the quality of security, data protection, design and usability by doing so.The government also plans to start operating in a more transparent way, for example by making parliamentary documents and transcripts of debates available in open data formats that can be used under free licenses, they said.This is much better than the last coalition agreement, said Matthias Kirschner vice president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).However, while there are good intentions, there are also missed opportunities, he said. For instance, It would have been better if the new government had prioritized the use of open source software for public institutions instead of simply making them consider it, he said, adding that the agreement’s formulation is often cautious.He said the FSFE regretted that references in earlier drafts to open standards had disappeared from the final agreement, and had been replaced with weaker terms such as interoperability.Kirschner called on the coalition to move from words to concrete action. “The question is: how hard will they try?” he said.The Business Software Alliance welcomed the new government’s focus on nurturing technology innovation in Germany.”However, if this is extended to technology mandates or procurement preferences, whether based on development model or country of origin, it will significantly impede innovation and create unnecessary barriers to trade, investment, and economic growth,” said Thomas Boué, director of government relations, EMEA of the BSA software alliance in an email. A level playing field for all competitors will ensure that customers have access to the best products and services the world has to offer, he said.”Governments should lead by example, making procurement decisions that are based on merit for the needs at hand and best value for money—rather than according to national origin,” he added.The agreement also dealt with security under a heading “Consequences of the NSA affair.”The coalition parties plan to keep pushing for more explanations about who spied on German citizens to what extent, and to negotiate a legally binding agreement with the U.S. to protect Germans against espionage.Communications infrastructure also needs to be made safer, they said. They will push European telecommunications providers to encrypt communication links within the E.U. They also plan to make sure that European telecommunication providers are not allowed to forward data to foreign intelligence agencies.The coalition will advocate for the Europe-wide introduction of a requirement for companies to report to the E.U. when they transmit the data of their customers without their consent to authorities in third countries. Besides that, it will press for the renegotiation of the E.U.-U.S. Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) Agreement and the Safe Harbor agreement on the protection of personal data.Under the TFTP Agreement, some data from the SWIFT international bank messaging system is transmitted to U.S. authorities. More recently, it was alleged that the NSA spied on the data.Following revelations about the NSA’s spying on Internet data, the European Parliament had called for the suspension of the Safe Harbor agreement. The European Commission decidednot to suspend the agreement, but instead put forward a range of proposals to strengthen it.On Tuesday, the German Bundestag re-elected Angela Merkel as German chancellor for the third time. The inaugural meeting of the cabinet was scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. local time.

Monsanto Obama

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1726.htm

 

 

World's Largest English Language News Service with Over 500 Articles Updated Daily

"The News You Need Today…For The World You’ll Live In Tomorrow." 

 

 

What You Aren’t Being Told AboutThe World You Live In

Picking up the Pieces: Practical Guide for Surviving Economic Crashes, Internal Unrest and Military Suppression By: Sorcha Faal “In the span of less than 3 months gasoline prices will rise 500%.  The prices of both food and shelter rise over 300%. (Continued)

Partisans Handbook: By: Sorcha Faal “Essential Survival Guide For Resisting Foreign Military Occupation, Escape And Evasion Techniques, Surviving Interrogation, Facing Execution, Wilderness Survival (Continued)

The Great Refusal: An Historical Guide To Christian Suicide:By: Sorcha Faal is a MUST book for anyone who has contemplated suicide, tried suicide or has had someone they know commit suicide.  For as the Sorcha Faal quotes in this psychologically, spiritual, monumental and controversial work: “The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you. Only the moment you reject all are you freed.”(Continued)

 

December 16, 2013

Obama-Monsanto Mass Genocide Plot Stuns Scientists

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

 

A stunning new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MINPRIRODY) is warning that “new scientific evidence” has emerged seemingly to prove that the Obama regime has joined forces with the multinational agricultural biotechnology giantMonsanto to perpetrate what can only be described as the “greatest genocidal plot against human beings in all of history.”The “new scientific evidence” referred to by MINPRIRODY in their report was provided to them this past week by Doctor-Scientist Irina Vladimirovna Ermakova of the National Association for Genetic Safety (NAGS) who is one of their researchers in the fields of genetics, physiology and biochemistry of plants, nutrition, allergology, and other branches of science and vice-president of this United Nations recognized Non Governmental Organization (NGO).In the “approved for public release”portions of Dr. Ermakova’s stunning analysis of this plot, which is even nowmaking world-wide headlines, this report continues, this highly respected international scientist calls for a 10-year moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to thoroughly study their influence on human health, stressing that such examinations are vital and further stating, “It has been proved that not only in Russia, but also in many other countries in the world, GMO is dangerous.”Much more ominous however, this MINPRIRODY report continues, is the“redacted for state security purposes”information contained in Dr. Ermakova’s analysis linking US President Barack Obama’s regime with Monsanto in a genocidal plot to“flood the world” with GMO crops and foods they fully know are“deadly and dangerous” and have to date killed upwards of 100 million human beings.Of the millions of deaths linked to GMOs, this report says; include the global epidemics of obesity (now linked to 1 in 5 deaths) and diabetes (which since 2006 the World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled as an“epidemic out of control.” )Most horrific of this“planned” GMO global genocide, Dr. Ermakova’s analysis asserts, is that it is also being perpetrated against babies and children by the Obama regime-Monsanto cabal through organophosphorous chemical exposure (a main component of GMO farming) that is causing a mass child IQ reduction the world over that rivals the impacts of major medical conditions.In proving her assertion of the Obama regime-Monsanto cabal link, Dr. Ermakova’s analysis cites evidence proving that after his victory in the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA and who include:At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto.Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a majorfunder of GMO agriculture research.

To how powerful these Monsanto genocidal supporters in the Obama regime have become, Dr. Ermakova proves, to this very date the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has never denied a single application for Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops, and this past year Obama signed what is called the 'Monsanto Protection Act' written by Monsanto-sponsored senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) into law over the objection of tens of millions of Americans.And not just to the USeither has Monsanto reached its GMO genocidal tentacles, Dr. Ermakova asserts, as in an unprecedented event reported earlier this month, the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology (Elsevier) retracted on one the most important long-term studies on the toxic effects of Monsanto GMOs it published a year ago and was conducted by one of France’s, indeed the worlds, top scientists Dr. Gilles-Éric Séralini.As had in been done in the US under the Obama regime, Dr. Ermakova points out, Dr. Séralini’s GMO study in the EU was retracted by the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology (and which he hasvowed to file suit over) after theycreated a new position titled ‘Associate Editor for Biotechnology’ and the person they hired to fill it was Richard E. Goodman, a former Monsanto employee who in addition was with the Monsanto pro-GMO lobby organization, the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) which develops industry-friendly risk assessment methods for GM foods and chemical food contaminants and inserts them into government regulations.And not just to the millions of human deaths are Obama and Monsanto being linked to either Dr. Ermakova states, but also to catastrophic environmental degradation due tosuper-weeds that have developed resistance to the glyphosate herbicide used with Monsanto’s engineered GMO crops and that have now reached epidemic proportionswith a recent survey putting the area infested by these weeds at 61 million acres in the US alone, and increasing rapidly.In, perhaps, one of Dr. Ermakova’s most stunning revelations, this MINPRIRODY report says, are that the Amish peoples in America, whose diet consists of eating organic, fresh, locally-grown produce and whose children are never allowed to be vaccinated, are being spared from this Obama regime-Monsanto genocide as their children never get autism and their adults suffer neither from obesity or diabetes.To the American people being able to discover for themselves the truth of this genocide being perpetrated against them, and the entire world, it appears less likely by the day as even more evidence has come forth showing how the Obama regime is controlling information after the famous US journalist Barbara Walters was ordered earlier this month by her Obama regime corporate bosses not to make Edward Snowden her most fascinating person of the year.December 16, 2013 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BYand GFDL.[Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth.  Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ against us has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit and which is addressed in the report “Who Is Sorcha Faal?”.]

Americans Celebrate Last Year As Free People

They Are Going To Come For You…Why Are You Helping Them?Return To Main Page

Obama Monsanto genocide plots

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1726.htm

Guard nsa

http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/29916022

Trapdoor time travel

Rhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/blog/2013/12/trap-doors-in-time-and-space-teleportation-time-travel-and-escape-from-black-holes/

Trap Doors in Time and Space: Teleportation, Time Travel, and Escape from Black Holes

By Seth Lloyd on December 16, 2013 11:53 AM | No comments yetCOMMENTShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on printMore Sharing ServicesDEC16Do you feel stuck in space and time? Do you want to fast forward to the future, replay the past—be anywhere but here and anywhen but now? Does your work situation seem like a black hole, sucking you remorselessly towards a point where your consciousness is squished into nothingness along with all the known laws of physics? I'm with you on all counts, if only because this article was due last week!Credit: Floriana/iStockLuckily for you and me, these are good days for teleporting out of here, traveling through time, and escaping from black holes. Hard as it is to bend our minds about such non-standard forms of transportation, the laws of physics allow and even encourage them. The secret lies in a feature of quantum mechanics called entanglement. Two quantum systems are said to be entangled when they have more information about each other than they can have classically: they "know" more about each other than they have any right to know. Entangled systems possess a kind of quantum intimacy that goes beyond anything that is allowed by the classical laws of physics.TeleportationEntanglement gives rise to what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" (spukhafte Fernwirkung), where an action performed on one quantum system seems to have an instantaneous effect on an entangled system. Under normal circumstances, quantum spooky action at a distance doesn't allow one to communicate instantaneously, but it does allow the quantum effect known as teleportation. Teleportation is a quantum version of the process familiar from Star Trek: the person/molecule/atom to be teleported dematerializes here, and rematerializes over there. For a long time, scientists thought that quantum mechanics didn't allow teleportation, because if you make measurements on the system to be teleported, quantum mechanics guarantees that those measurements are both destructive and incomplete: They destroy features of the state of the measured system, and they cannot reveal the full quantum state of the system to be teleported. As a result, physicists reasoned, accurate teleportation of any quantum system was impossible.In 1993, however, a group of quantum physicists realized that entanglement allows one to teleport a quantum system even though measurement is destructive and incomplete. The protocol works as follows. Alice wants to teleport an electron to Bob. Suppose that in addition to the electron that Alice is going to teleport, Alice and Bob share a pair of entangled electrons. Alice makes a measurement on the electron she wants to teleport, as well as her half of the entangled pair. She sends the result of the measurement to Bob. Now, even though Alice's measurement is completely destructive and, taken on its own, reveals no information about the state of the electron that she wishes to teleport, the result of the measurement contains exactly the information that Bob needs to recreate the original electron from his half of theentangled pair. (A more detailed description of how quantum teleportationworks can be foundhere.)Shortly after it was proposed, experimentalists made quantum teleportation a reality, teleporting particles of light, or photons, and even larger stuff, like electrons or atoms, over distances which now range beyond a hundred kilometers. Really large quantum systems, like human beings, have proved harder to teleport.Escape from black holesTeleportation may be an unorthodox mode of traveling, but in one sense, it is quite conventional: It does not allow one to go faster than the speed of light, because Alice has to send the results of her measurement to Bob in order for him to recreate the original system. Under ordinary conditions, that information can travel no faster than the speed of light. The interior of a black hole does not represent ordinary conditions, however. At the center of the black hole is a singularity, a place where all the known laws of physics break down, and infalling matter and energy are squished to nothingness. Because of the breakdown of known physics at the singularity, we don't know what happens there. While some might regard such ignorance as an impediment, to a scientist, it represents an opportunity: Since we don't know what happens at the singularity of a black hole, we are free to postulate any dynamics that we like. That is exactly what theorists Gary Horowitz and Juan Maldacena did to construct a theory of escape from black holes based on quantum teleportation.Without quantum mechanics, when you fall into a black hole you are doomed: You will be sucked into the singularity in a time no longer than twice the radius of the black hole divided by the speed of light. Before you hit the singularity, you will be ripped apart from tidal forces. Bummer. You might think that a desperate blast on your rockets might at least slow down the inexorable descent, but it turns out that the theory of relativity implies that fighting to blast your way out of a black hole is counterproductive: trying to accelerate away from the singularity actually means it takes you lesstime to arrive there. Black holes are like quicksand: If you fall in, don't struggle.With quantum mechanics, however, there is a faint hope. In 1974, Steven Hawking showed that black holes emit a faint, ethereal form of radiation. Just maybe, the Hawking radiation could contain the bits of information required to assemble any lost travelers who ventured too close to the hole.How could that be? Hawking radiation consists of entangled pairs of particles, a negative energy particle that falls into the hole, thereby reducing the hole's mass, and a positive energy particle that escapes off to infinity. So if a would-be teleporter inside the hole were able to make a measurement on you together with the infalling Hawking radiation, and could send the results of that measurement outside of the hole, then that information could be used to recreate you out of the outgoing Hawking radiation. Unfortunately, to send the results of the measurement out of the hole requires faster-than-light communication, so you are still stuck. But there is a way out. Horowitz and Maldacena invite us to consider that the process of being smooshed into nothingness at the singularity is effectively such a measurement, but in contrast to the measurements made in teleportation, which probabilistically yield different outcomes, in the Horowitz-Maldacena model, the measurement made by the singularity always yields the same outcome. Your rescuers outside the hole can therefore recreate you by the same process as in teleportation. You are saved! Although you are still likely to feel a bit smooshed.Time travelTo escape from a black hole, you must effectively travel faster than the speed of light. But as everyone knows, if you can travel faster than the speed of light, you can also go backwards in time. Althoughit sounds like science fiction, time travel is actually allowed in Einstein's theory of general relativity: space times can possess closed timelike curves which you can enter in the future and exit in the past. In 2009, my colleagues and I showed that the quantum mechanics of closed timelike curves was essentially the same as that of teleportation and escape from black holes. In addition to providing a novel theory of quantum time travel, we performed an experiment that was the moral equivalent of the famous grandfather paradox of time travel: we sent a photon a few billionths of a second back in time and had it try to kill its former self. What happened? Well, let's just say that our experiment was not like one of the movies where they say at the end, "No animals were harmed during the making of this movie." Gajillions of photons died. Luckily there is no society for prevention of cruelty to photons—yet. Ironically, however, the one photon we sent back to perform auto-homocide failed to off its former self.How exactly did we send the photons back in time? Like escape from a black hole, travel through a closed timelike curve is based on teleportation—in this case, teleportation from the future to the past. Recall that in the Horowitz-Maldacena model, the singularity effectively performs a measurement on you and the infalling Hawking radiation just as you are being smooshed into nothingness. A similar effect occurs at the future entrance to a closed timelike curve: As you enter the curve, you disappear from view of observers in the "normal" spacetime outside the entrance. So far as they are concerned, you are disappearing into nothingness. In our model, as you disappear, the closed timelike curve effectively performs a measurement on you along with curve's analog of Hawking radiation, called horizon radiation. Just as the effect of the measurement at the singularity of a black hole causes you to reappear outside the hole, the effect of the measurement at the entrance to the closed timelike curve causes you to reappear at the exit to the curve in the past.Actually teleporting something to the past with certainty would require a true closed timelike curve. (Or maybe a pair of black holes!) Unfortunately, the department of workplace safety at MIT wouldn't let us construct such an object in the laboratory. At University of Toronto, however, Aephraim Steinberg's group was able to do the next best thing: perform a teleportation experiment using entangled photons in which some fraction of the time one of the entangled photons in the past was identical to the time traveling photon in the future. The photon returning from the future was tasked with trying to prevent its former self from entering the teleportation device using a device called a photon gun, which was pointed closer and closer at the photon in the past. But the photon from the future couldn't prevent the photon from the past from performing the teleportation, no matter how directly the photon gun was pointed at its past self. That is, no matter how hard it tried, the photon couldn't kill its former self. The closer it got to killing itself, the less and less likely the teleporation was to succeed. For a detailed account of the quantum theory of time travel and the results of our experiment, see here.Quantum mechanics is famously weird, and quantum weirdness opens up opportunities for funky methods for getting from point A to point B, even if point A is inside a black hole, and point B is outside, or point A lies in the present, and point B is in the past. To date, only teeny things have been teleported and effectivelysent backwards in time. Since big things are made of teeny things, they too obey the laws of quantum mechanics, and are candidates for funky quantum transportation. In the not so distant future, we too will be quantum commuters.Go DeeperEditor's picks for further readingNOVA: Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum LeapExplore entanglement and teleportation in this episode from the NOVA series Fabric of the Cosmos.NOVA: Spooky Action at a DistanceIn this essay, physicist Brian Greene explores the history of quantum entanglement, and explains why Einstein found it so "spooky."The Open University: The Grandfather Paradox - 60-Second Adventures in ThoughtThis this brief animated video, discover the history of the grandfather paradox of time travel.COMMENTTags: black holes, quantum mechanics, telepor

4 FRI Ranch Task Order

4 FRI Ranch Task Order, a photo by Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests on Flickr.

disgusting

Tor

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/05/tor-beginners-guide-nsa-browser

agdalena Rehova/Alamy
Stuart Dredge

Until this year, the internet privacy tool Tor was scarcely heard of outside the tech community. Since revelations about the surveillance strategies of US and UK spies, Tor has become a focus of criticism, accused of facilitating a dangerous "dark web" of paedophiles, drug dealers and arms traders.
But while the NSA has tried to crack its security, Tor's principal source of funding has been other parts of the US government. While a criminal contingent may use the site to disguise identities, its creators point to a wider group of legitimate users including journalists, activists, law enforcement professionals, whistleblowers and businesses.
In a year Tor has grown from 500,000 daily users worldwide to more than 4 million users, provoking an increasingly public debate along the way.
What is Tor?
The Tor project is a non-profit organisation that conducts research and development into online privacy and anonymity. It is designed to stop people – including government agencies and corporations – learning your location or tracking your browsing habits.
Based on that research, it offers a technology that bounces internet users' and websites' traffic through "relays" run by thousands of volunteers around the world, making it extremely hard for anyone to identify the source of the information or the location of the user.
Its software package – the Tor browser bundle – can be downloaded and used to take advantage of that technology, with a separate version available for Android smartphones.
There are some trade-offs to make: for example, browsing using Tor is slower due to those relays, and it blocks some browser plugins like Flash and QuickTime. YouTube videos don't play by default either, although you can use the "opt-in trial" of YouTube's HTML5 site to bring them back.
Who created Tor?
The original technology behind Tor was developed by the US navy and has received about 60% of its funding from the State Department and Department of Defense, although its other backers have included digital rights lobbyist the Electronic Frontier Foundation, journalism and community body Knight Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
When it launched in 2002, the Tor project's emphasis was on protecting internet users' privacy from corporations rather than governments.
"We were increasingly concerned about all these websites - in the 2000/01 dotcom bubble, everyone was offering free services, and by free they meant 'we take all your information and sell it as many times as possible'," executive director Andrew Lewman told the Guardian in April 2012.
"We wanted a way to: one, put some of our research into practice and see how it would work; and two, we wanted to give the control over your information to you, the user, not to have all these companies take it by default. And let you take decisions about do you trust Google, do you trust Amazon, do you trust the BBC, whatever."
NSA logo
Use of Tor has increased since the revelations about NSA surveillance. Photograph: Alex Milan Tracy/NurPhoto/Corbis
Who uses Tor?
The Tor project team say its users fall into four main groups: normal people who want to keep their internet activities private from websites and advertisers; those concerned about cyberspying; and users evading censorship in certain parts of the world.
Tor notes that its technology is also used by military professionals – the US navy is still a key user – as well as activists and journalists in countries with strict censorship of media and the internet. Campaigning body Reporters Without Borders advises journalists to use Tor, for example.
Tor also cites bloggers, business executives, IT professionals and law enforcement officers as key users, with the latter including police needing to mask their IP addresses when working undercover online, or investigating "questionable web sites and services".
For more mainstream users, it could mean running Tor so that your children's location can't be identified when they are online, or could mean a political activist in China, Russia or Syria could protect their identity.
After the NSA surveillance revelations in 2013, a new wave of users joined the service. Between 19 August and 27 August alone the number of people using Tor more than doubled to 2.25 million, according to Tor's own figures, before peaking at nearly 6 million in mid-September. It has since slipped back to just over 4 million.
The dark side of Tor
The cloak of anonymity provided by Tor makes it an attractive and powerful for criminals. Another NSA document described it thus: "Very naughty people use Tor".
Tor can mask users' identities, but also host their websites via its "hidden services" capabilities, which mean sites can only be accessed by people on the Tor network. This is the so-called "dark web" element, and it's not unusual to see Tor pop up in stories about a range of criminal sites.
In August, a service provider called Freedom Hosting went offline after the FBI sought the extradition of a 28-year-old Irish man for charges relating to distributing and promoting child abuse material online.
Underground illegal-drugs marketplace Silk Road, which was shut down in early October, was another hidden site only accessible through Tor, as was another store called Black Market Reloaded which has been accused of facilitating illegal arms dealing as well as drug purchases.
Sites such as these are why Tor was recently described by British MP Julian Smith as "the black internet where child pornography, drug trafficking and arms trading take place" during a parliamentary debate on the intelligence and security services.
Smith went on to criticise the Guardian for reporting in detail on the claims that the NSA had been trying to crack Tor's security, suggesting that "many people in the police world feel will cause major issues in terms of picking up people engaged in organised crime".
David Cameron
David Cameron: said the UK authorities planned to 'shine a light on this hidden internet'. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Law enforcement co-operation
In the past, the team behind Tor has responded to exactly this question, denying that the anonymity tool is an obstacle to police investigating criminal activities.
"We work with law enforcement a lot," Lewman told the Guardian. "They are fully aware of bad guys on Tor. However, the criminals already have all the privacy they could ever need, because they're willing to break the laws: they're willing to steal identities, they're willing to hack into machines, they're willing to run botnets."
"People sort of hear 'Tor' and think 'forget it, I'll never solve this case', but really there's a human at the other end, and that's what the law enforcement targets most of the time. Humans make mistakes, they do silly things, trust the wrong things, and that's how they've caught nearly everyone who uses Tor as part of their illegal schemes."
In the UK, law enforcement agencies had been investigating hidden services on Tor for some time before the Guardian's reports. On 22 July, David Cameron delivered a speech to the NSPCC talking about plans to integrate the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) into the national crime agency.
"Once CEOP becomes a part of the national crime agency, that will further increase their ability to investigate behind the paywalls, to shine a light on this hidden internet and to drive prosecutions and convictions of those who are found to use it," said Cameron. "So we should be clear to any offender who might think otherwise, there is no such thing as a safe place on the internet to access child abuse material."
In a recent blogpost responding to the Freedom Hosting news, Tor also pointed out that hidden services aren't just used by criminals, pointing to organisations using the technology to "protect dissidents, activists, and protect the anonymity of users trying to find help for suicide prevention, domestic violence, and abuse-recovery."
Does Tor still work?
Questions about Tor's use by good and/or bad guys are one thing, but as more people become aware of it, another sensible question is whether it works, particularly in the light of the NSA repeatedly developing attacks against Tor. That appears to have been a frustrating task.
"We will never be able to de-anonymise all Tor users all the time," said "Tor Stinks", an NSA presentation from June 2012. "With manual analysis we can de-anonymise a very small fraction of Tor users, however, no success de-anonymising a user ... on demand."
For its part, Roger Dingledine, the president of the Tor project, said following the Guardian's publication of that presentation that "there's no indication they can break the Tor protocol or do traffic analysis on the Tor network", while reminding users that humans remain the weak links in online communications.
"Infecting the laptop, phone, or desktop is still the easiest way to learn about the human behind the keyboard. Tor still helps here: you can target individuals with browser exploits, but if you attack too many users, somebody's going to notice. So even if the NSA aims to surveil everyone, everywhere, they have to be a lot more selective about which Tor users they spy on."
The NSA's attacks against Tor included targeting security holes in the Firefox web browser. Tor encourages users of its Tor Browser Bundle to upgrade to the latest version regularly, to ensure they have the latest security fixes for the software.
What next?
Security expert Bruce Schneier recently made anonymisation tools such as Tor the first step in his advice on "how to remain secure against the NSA". But this kind of technology will not stand still in the coming months and years, as the attempts to crack it get smarter and more persistent.
Though Tor is likely to appeal to more sophisticated internet users, public concern over government and corporate surveillance and tracking is likely to mean it becomes more widely used by mainstream internet users.
"Browser exploits, large-scale surveillance, and general user security are all challenging topics for the average internet user," Dingledine said.
"These attacks make it clear that we, the broader internet community, need to keep working on better security for browsers and other internet-facing applications."
• Tor 'deep web' servers go offline as Irish man held over child abuse images
Tags: Internet,  Data protection,  Software, Computing,

mistaken!!!

already in?

Bankers crime

http://rt.com/op-edge/banksers-financial-crimes-prosecute-criminals-209/

Freevideo ИНОТВ RTД RUPTLY
 
LIVE

Section
Home / Op-Edge /
UK, US govts hand in hand with bankers committing financial crimes

Max Keiser, the host of RT's ‘Keiser Report,’ is a former stockbroker, the inventor of the virtual specialist technology, virtual currencies, and prediction markets.

Get short URL Published time: December 13, 2013 15:53
AFP Photo / Oliver Morin
AFP Photo / Oliver Morin
Iceland is a great example of a country which had the courage to prosecute bankers, and that’s largely because it’s not controlled by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, Max Keiser, financial analyst and host of the Keiser Report on RT, says.

Four former bank bosses in Iceland have been jailed for financial fraud. They were accused of hiding the fact that a Qatari investor bought into the firm [Kaupthing Bank], with money lent illegally by the bank itself. It went bust in 2008, helping to cripple Iceland's economy.

Keiser says, what is considered a crime in Iceland is flourishing thanks to government support in the UK and the US.

RT: What are the broader ramifications of this case?

Max Keiser: I think we need to understand that in this crime that was committed in Iceland, with the participation of the government in Qatar, you have a classic Ponzi scheme where a bank was lending money to Qatar to buy shares in banks in Iceland to artificially inflate the price of the stock of the bank, and then they would use that artificially high bank stock price to make loans, to make acquisitions and then when the bubble burst it all came down. And of course there was a crime committed, and the Icelandic government is now prosecuting for that financial fraud.

But what's interesting is that if you look at what's happening in the UK right now - HSBC, Barklays, Lloyds, and the Royal Bank of Scotland in particular - they are participating in exactly the same fraud with the help and participation of the Bank of England. It's a program called quantitative easing where central bank loans to the commercial banks to buy stock or bonds in this case in the central bank. So they are doing the same exact thing that in Iceland is a crime.

I think because Iceland, Russia, Iran and China are all banking systems that are outside of the control of the Federal Reserve in America or the Bank of England in the UK, they are free to prosecute financial crimes. They don't have that freedom in the UK because the bankers are protected by the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, the Federal Reserve in New York who collude on a global basis to line the pockets of the criminals, in this case the bankers in the UK and the US, and of course their economies are suffering catastrophically as a result of this: poverty is on the rise, and living standards in the UK are crashing worse than they've ever crashed since the Victorian times.

RT: Any chance other high-flying financial scammers will now find themselves in the dock on similar charges?

MK: The banking zones outside of Russia, Iran, China and Iceland are pretty much controlled by what's known as the Rothschild influence. The Rothschild of course in their family really owns the Central Banks in America and the Bank of England. But China, Russia, Iran and Iceland don't have to answer to the Rothschild, so they are free to prosecute what I call financial terrorists.

RT: To what extent should governments control financial institutions and their deals.

MK: Governments are completely co-opted by the bankers. The UK government has been co-opted by Barclays. And the Royal Bank of Scotland in particular was just caught targeting small businesses for death where they were setting small businesses up to fail so their affiliates could swoop in and buy assets for pennies on the dollar. So [they've been] acting as what I call financial terrorists with the full cooperation of David Cameron, George Osborne and Mark Carney, head of the Bank of England. They are fully engaged in the confiscation of wealth using what I call financial apartheid and other tricks to essentially steal wealth from the vast majority for the benefit of a very few bankers who work globally.

But not in Iceland! Iceland had the courage to do what we've seen in some other territories, by prosecuting bankers. In Vietnam a banker caught committing a financial crime was executed. There needs to be a deterrent against a financial fraud of this magnitude.

Capital punishment seems maybe a good idea if it will deter bankers from committing acts of financial terrorism. In the US, capital punishment is legal. I say use it to go after the really bad guys, the people of Wall Street, the people of the Central Bank; stop killing poor black kids in Texas because you don't like the way they look and go after the white guys on Wall Street who commit genuine acts of financial terrorism. They've got capital punishment - use it to better society, not just kill poor kids.

The statements, views and opinions

Fundie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu8mUl3PKkQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Saurus. Bristol

Thecodontosaurus, Bristol's own dinosaur, to go on display at university http://gu.com/p/3y7n4

It roamed a tropical island habitat 210 million years ago, racing around in herds and pausing from time to time to stand on hind legs to nibble with razor-sharp teeth on the leaves of palm-like cycad trees. Introducing Theco, the Bristol dinosaur.As the unveiling of a life-sized statue on Friday confirmed, Theco – full name Thecodontosaurus antiquus – is not the most spectacular of dinosaurs, measuring no bigger than a labrador dog.But nevertheless Theco is a fascinating creature because of both its place in the history of palaeontology and what it reveals about the south-west of England in prehistoric times.Fossilised remains of Theco were first discovered in 1834 in a quarry on Durdham Downs in Clifton, Bristol, making it only the fourth dinosaur (even the word "dinosaur" did not exist then) to be identified anywhere in the world.Since then many more bones have been found in Bristol, south Gloucestershire and south Wales.But for years scientists laboured under the misapprehension that Theco was a meat-eater who lived in desert-type conditions. As more and more Theco traces were found and studied, experts have come to realise that the creature was a herbivore with powerful back legs that allowed it to reach up into low-hanging tree branches. Theco had small sharp teeth, each with tiny sharp bumps running along one side, able to tear through thick, juicy leaves.The scientists also realised its habitat was a group of tropical islands, now known as the Mendip Archipelago, which was situated somewhere around what is now north Africa.Over the last four years the Lottery-funded Bristol Dinosaur Project has been helping to gather and preserve thousands of Theco bones, to teach local schoolchildren and residents about the dinosaur and now to produce the model, which will go on show at Bristol university's Wills Memorial building.© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

pollution of the mindset!

http://inlovewithellieguest.webeden.co.uk/