http://www.sott.net Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events. en-us Original content Copyright 2013 by Signs of the Times/Sott.net. For other content, see our Fair Use Policy at www.sott.net. Thu, 20 Jun 2013 05:14:18 -0500 http://www.sott.net/images/sottlogo_rss.jpg SOTT.net http://www.sott.net http://www.sott.net/article/262969-Forget-3DTVs-MIT-group-working-to-bring-holographs-to-your-living-room Remember when Tupac made an appearance at last year's Coachella festival? It wasn't really Tupac but a holograph of the late rapper. The holograph wasn't like watching a regular 3D TV image. You didn't need glasses, it was viewable to the entire audience, no matter what angle they were watching at, and it wasn't just a projected two dimensional image. It looked like Tupac was really on stage. The engineers of the Object-Based Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, led by V. Michael Bove Jr. and his graduate student Dan Smalley, are working on technology that might enable that experience in your living room. The group is aiming to make true holographic videos not only a reality, but an affordable reality. Sure, there have been other types of glasses-free 3D screens and devices, including the Nintendo 3DS handheld gaming system or various 3D TVs shown by Vizio and Toshiba, but those have suffered from poor viewing angles, causing the image to be distorted when you move off the right or left. They also aren't considered true holograms. http://www.sott.net/article/262969-Forget-3DTVs-MIT-group-working-to-bring-holographs-to-your-living-room Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:55:18 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262968-Dotcom-in-tears-after-Megaupload-files-deleted Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom said Thursday he was "in tears" after a European company deleted all the data it was hosting from his shuttered file-sharing site. Netherlands-based LeaseWeb announced it had deleted all Megaupload files from 630 servers. LeaseWeb said in a statement it hosted the data for over a year at its own expense without receiving any requests to access it or retain it before deciding the time had come to use the servers for other purposes. But Dotcom said in a series of Twitter posts that his lawyers repeatedly asked LeaseWeb to keep the data pending U.S. court proceedings. Dotcom said that millions of users' personal files had been lost in the "largest data massacre in the history of the Internet." http://www.sott.net/article/262968-Dotcom-in-tears-after-Megaupload-files-deleted Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:46:01 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262967-Singapore-haze-at-worst-yet-Malaysia-schools-shut Singapore urged people to remain indoors amid unprecedented levels of air pollution Thursday as a smoky haze wrought by forest fires in neighboring Indonesia worsened dramatically. Nearby Malaysia closed 200 schools and banned open burning in some areas. The Pollutant Standards Index, Singapore's main measure for air pollution, surged to a record reading of 371, breaching the "hazardous" classification that can aggravate respiratory ailments. The previous all-time high before this week was in 1997, when the index reached 226. The hazardous reading lasted three hours before easing to 253 in the evening, still "very unhealthy." Smog fueled by raging Indonesian blazes has hit Singapore and Malaysia many times, often in the middle of the year, but the severity of this week's conditions has strained diplomatic ties. Officials in Singapore say Jakarta must do more to halt fires on Sumatra island started by plantation owners and farmers to clear land cheaply. "This is now the worst haze that Singapore has ever faced," Singapore's Environment Minister Vivian Balakrishnan wrote on his Facebook page. "No country or corporation has the right to pollute the air at the expense of Singaporeans' health and wellbeing." The haze has shrouded the city-state's skyscrapers in a pall of noxious fumes and posed numerous inconveniences for Singaporeans, some of whom complained of coughs and covered their faces with handkerchiefs while walking outdoors. http://www.sott.net/article/262967-Singapore-haze-at-worst-yet-Malaysia-schools-shut Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:35:52 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262966-The-Nitrate-and-Nitrite-Myth-Another-reason-not-to-fear-bacon Beyond just being loaded with "artery-clogging saturated fat" and sodium, bacon has been long considered unhealthy due to the use of nitrates and nitrites in the curing process. Many conventional doctors, and well-meaning friends and relatives, will say you're basically asking for a heart attack or cancer by eating the food many Paleo enthusiasts lovingly refer to as "meat candy". The belief that nitrates and nitrates cause serious health problems has been entrenched in popular consciousness and media. Watch this video clip to see Steven Colbert explain how the coming bacon shortage will prolong our lives thanks to reduced nitrates in our diets. In fact, the study that originally connected nitrates with cancer risk and caused the scare in the first place has since been discredited after being subjected to a peer review. There have been major reviews of the scientific literature that found no link between nitrates or nitrites and human cancers, or even evidence to suggest that they may be carcinogenic. Further, recent research suggests that nitrates and nitrites may not only be harmless, they may be beneficial, especially for immunity and heart health. Confused yet? Let's explore this issue further. http://www.sott.net/article/262966-The-Nitrate-and-Nitrite-Myth-Another-reason-not-to-fear-bacon Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:31:57 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262965-Fast-food-burgers-oozing-with-parasites-and-ammonia The world of meat-eaters got a rude awakening earlier this year when it was found that meat passed off as beef in the U.K. was actually horse meat. But, if you thought meat in the U.S. was safe from secret ingredients, the bliss of your ignorance may soon be shattered. A recent analysis into several different fast food hamburgers found relatively little meat, and a whole host of other "stuff". According to GreenMedInfo, the study was to determine what exactly Americans are eating when they consume their 5 billion hamburgers annually. The burgers, from 8 different fast food establishments, were analyzed by weight and then microscopically for tissue types. Their analysis found that water constituted about half of the weight of the burgers, with water content ranging from 37.7% to 62.4%, with an average of 49%. Meat, what you'd expect to make up the majority of the burgers, was found to be as low as 2.1% in some cases, to the maximum of 14.8% in others. http://www.sott.net/article/262965-Fast-food-burgers-oozing-with-parasites-and-ammonia Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:31:10 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262964-ER-visits-on-the-rise-due-to-distracted-walking Over a thousand pedestrians had to make a trip to the emergency room in 2010 for injuries related to using their cell phone and walking. According to a new nationwide study published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, more than 1,500 pedestrians were injured while walking due to cell phone distractions. This number has more than doubled since 2005, even though the total number of pedestrian injuries dropped during that time. The researchers from this study even believe that the number is actually higher than results show. "If current trends continue, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of injuries to pedestrians caused by cell phones doubles again between 2010 and 2015," said Jack Nasar, co-author of the study and professor of city and regional planning at The Ohio State University. "The role of cell phones in distracted driving injuries and deaths gets a lot of attention and rightly so, but we need to also consider the danger cell phone use poses to pedestrians." Nasar and colleagues found that people between the ages 16- and 25-years-old were most likely to be injured from distracted walking, and most were hurt while talking rather than texting. The team used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) to make the finding. They examined data for seven years involving injuries related to cell phone use for pedestrians in public areas. http://www.sott.net/article/262964-ER-visits-on-the-rise-due-to-distracted-walking Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:21:38 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262963-US-becoming-a-medication-nation-with-rampant-use-of-prescription-drugs A new study from the Mayo Clinic on our 'Medication Nation' showed almost 70 percent of Americans are being prescribed at least one prescription drug. According to the study, published in the clinic's own Mayo Clinic Proceedings journal, antibiotics, antidepressants, and opioid painkillers are the top three groups of prescribed drugs in the US. Study co-author Jennifer St. Sauver said the study provides insight into the prescribing habits of doctors, which may or may not be indicative of health trends. "Often when people talk about health conditions they're talking about chronic conditions such as heart disease or diabetes," said St. Sauver, an epidemiologist at the clinic. "However, the second most common prescription was for antidepressants - that suggests mental health is a huge issue and is something we should focus on. And the third most common drugs were opioids, which is a bit concerning considering their addicting nature." In the study, the researchers used information from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a health research collaboration that includes medical records from people living in Minnesota's Olmstead County. According to study authors, the study cohort represented almost 99 percent of those living in the county and the statistics from the project are comparable to those from other US populations. http://www.sott.net/article/262963-US-becoming-a-medication-nation-with-rampant-use-of-prescription-drugs Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:16:44 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262962-Putin-Iraqi-chemical-weapons-produced-for-Syrian-rebels Russian President Vladimir Putin said chemical laboratories in Iraq are producing chemical weapons for the terrorists in Syria, confirming a detailed report by Far News Agency (FNA) last month which said former Ba'ath regime officials are involved in the production and procurement of such weapons to the Syrian terrorists. "We know that Opposition Fighters were detained on Turkish territory with chemical weapons," Mr. Putin told a press conference in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland after meeting the leaders of the industrialized nations in a G8 Summit. "We have information out of Iraq that a laboratory was discovered there for the production of chemical weapons by the opposition. All this evidence needs to be studied most seriously," he continued. Putin questioned the credibility of allegations by the US, UK and France that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's forces had used chemical weapons, and attributed equivalent horrors to the forces supported by the West. http://www.sott.net/article/262962-Putin-Iraqi-chemical-weapons-produced-for-Syrian-rebels Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:36:16 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262961-What-are-the-Marfa-lights The Marfa Lights, mysterious glowing orbs that appear in the desert outside the West Texas town of Marfa, have mystified people for generations. According to eyewitnesses, the Marfa Lights appear to be roughly the size of basketballs and are varyingly described as white, blue, yellow, red or other colors. Reportedly, the Marfa Lights hover, merge, twinkle, split into two, flicker, float up into the air or dart quickly across Mitchell Flat (the area east of Marfa where they're most commonly reported). There seems to be no way to predict when the lights will appear; they're seen in various weather conditions, but only a dozen or so nights a year. And nobody knows for sure what they are - or if they really even exist at all. The Native Americans of the area thought the Marfa Lights were fallen stars, the Houston Chronicle reports. The first mention of the lights comes from 1883, when cowhand Robert Reed Ellison claimed to have seen flickering lights one evening while driving a herd of cattle near Mitchell Flat. He assumed the lights were from Apache campfires. Ellison was told by area settlers that they often saw the lights, too, but upon investigation, they found no ashes or other evidence of a campfire, according to the Texas State Historical Association. During World War II, pilots from nearby Midland Army Air Field tried to locate the source of the mysterious lights, but were unable to discover anything. http://www.sott.net/article/262961-What-are-the-Marfa-lights Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:03:16 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262960-We-were-told-to-lie-Bank-of-America-employees-open-up-about-foreclosure-practices Employees of Bank of America say they were encouraged to lie to customers and were even rewarded for foreclosing on homes, staffers of the financial giant claim in new court documents. Sworn statements from several Bank of America employees contain a number of damning allegations, the latest claims entered as evidence in a multi-state class action lawsuit that challenges the bank's history with foreclosures. According to testimonies obtained by journalists at ProPublica, supervisors at various Bank of America branches across the United States encouraged employees to regularly deny loan modification applications with no reason. At times, they were told to make up excuses to customers who risked losing their homes. In one of the sworn statements, an ex-bank staffer said he would be directed to deny upwards of 1,500 loan modification applications at a single time with no apparent reason. http://www.sott.net/article/262960-We-were-told-to-lie-Bank-of-America-employees-open-up-about-foreclosure-practices Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:10:01 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262959-Investigators-claim-government-falsified-TWA-800-air-crash-probe Former investigators of the TWA Flight 800 airplane crash have revealed that an explosion came from outside the plane, thereby contradicting the government's conclusion that the fatal crash was an accident. The investigators claim they were silenced from telling the truth by their superiors, and were forced to conclude that the 1996 crash was an accident sparked by a fuel tank explosion. In a new EPIX film called "TWA Flight 800", the former National Transportation Safety Board investigators communicate their beliefs that an outside explosion was responsible for the deadly crash that occurred nearly 17 years ago, killing all 230 people on board. The documentary film revolves around the crash of the Trans World Airlines Flight 800, a Boeing 747-131 that exploded and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York on July 17, 1996. The plane had been en route from New York to Paris, but went up in flames over the Atlantic Ocean, just 12 minutes after take-off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. There were no survivors, and some speculated that the plane might have been the target of a terrorist attack. http://www.sott.net/article/262959-Investigators-claim-government-falsified-TWA-800-air-crash-probe Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:04:08 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262958-9-trillion-missing-from-the-Federal-Reserve-Kinda-misplaced-it-Huh Hypothetical: "Can I have an extra 2 years to pay my $7,000 in back property taxes Uncle SAM?" Response: "No. We are going to take it from you tomorrow. Oh, by the way. and we misplaced $28,000 dollars of your money. See you tomorrow." The Federal Reserve has kinda, sorta misplaced $9,000,000,000,000 as shown by a recent video surfaced on you tube (see video below). Your tax money is being stolen. No one at the federal reserve is keeping track of what happened to 9 trillion dollars. With black budgets and under the table deals can we just guess where all the money has gone? Into the pockets of the Bilderberg fortune 100 attendees. We provided detailed evidence the organization exists with actual documents from their conference recently released to us! Read the documents at Unusual Bilderberg Documents Uncovered at Georgetown University. So thats $28,125 roughly stolen from every American citizen. Its time for a class action lawsuit . The Federal Reserve is private isn't it? http://www.sott.net/article/262958-9-trillion-missing-from-the-Federal-Reserve-Kinda-misplaced-it-Huh Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:51:16 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262957-Think-the-Anti-GMO-movement-is-unscientific-Think-again "Anyone that says, 'Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,' I say is either unbelievably stupid, or deliberately lying. The reality is, we don't know. The experiments simply haven't been done, and now we have become the guinea pigs." ~ David Suzuki, geneticist Now that the mainstream media is catching on to the public sentiment against GMO food, or at least against unlabeled GMO food, to the tune of millions of Americans who made it a point to drag themselves out of their homes to protest Monsanto last month (as well as at least 40 additional countries), inevitably the indictment will be made: "the anti-GMO movement is "unscientific."" Is that really so? What we do know is that the unintended consequences of the recombinant DNA process employed to create genetically engineering organisms are beyond the ability of present-day science to comprehend. This is largely due to the post-Human Genome Project revelation that the holy grail of molecular biology, the overly-simplified 'one gene > one trait' model, is absolutely false. http://www.sott.net/article/262957-Think-the-Anti-GMO-movement-is-unscientific-Think-again Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:40:20 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262956-What-Sickens-People-in-Oil-Spills-and-How-Badly-Is-Anybodys-Guess ince 2010, at least three ruptured pipelines have spilled oil into U.S. neighborhoods, forcing officials to decide quickly whether local residents would be harmed if they breathed the foul air. But because there are no clear federal guidelines saying if or when the public should be evacuated during an oil spill, health officials had to use a patchwork of scientific and regulatory data designed for other situations. As a result, residents of the three communities received different levels of protection. No houses were evacuated in Salt Lake City, Utah, where a ruptured pipeline leaked 33,000 gallons of medium grade crude oil before it was discovered on the morning of June 12, 2010. The oil ran down Red Butte Creek, past neighborhoods where windows were left open in the summer heat. The fumes, which are known to cause drowsiness, left some people so lethargic that they didn't wake up until after noon. In Marshall, Mich. officials called for a voluntary evacuation after more than a million gallons of heavy Canadian crude spilled into the Kalamazoo River on July 25, 2010. But they agonized over the decision for four days before making that recommendation. In Mayflower, Ark. authorities quickly evacuated 22 families after a broken pipeline leaked about 200,000 gallons of heavy crude on March 29, 2013. But people living in the same subdivision, just a few blocks away, were not asked to leave. Neither were the residents of the lakeside community where the oil eventually pooled and where the cleanup continues today. After each of these spills, people complained of headaches, nausea and respiratory problems - short-term symptoms that health experts say are common after any chemical spill and usually disappear as the air clears. http://www.sott.net/article/262956-What-Sickens-People-in-Oil-Spills-and-How-Badly-Is-Anybodys-Guess Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:30:15 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262955-Prayers-to-drive-out-ghost-at-Bangladesh-garment-plant Dhaka: Owners of a Bangladesh garment factory were forced to offer prayers and distribute food to the poor on Wednesday in a bid to drive out what workers believed was a ghost at the plant, police said. Some 3,500 workers stopped work at the plant in Gazipur, north of Dhaka on Tuesday, and smashed furniture to demand action to remove the ghost, which some workers claimed had attacked them in the ladies' washroom. "The agitating workers refused to join duty and vandalised the factory after the management did not take any steps to drive out the ghost," Gazipur industrial police inspector Showkat Kabir told AFP. Kabir said the owners held special prayers - recitation of the Koran and hymns in praise of the Prophet Mohammed - at the factory and also distributed food among the poor to drive out the "ghost". "All the workers, owners and the managers will join the prayers and the factory will reopen on Thursday after two days of shutdown due to the ghost-related protests," he said. A medical expert said the "ghost attack" could be a sign of psychological distress in the wake of a series of deadly disasters involving garment workers in the past six months. http://www.sott.net/article/262955-Prayers-to-drive-out-ghost-at-Bangladesh-garment-plant Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:29:13 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262954-The-clear-and-utterly-unscientific-case-for-GMO-transparency The latest news out of Oregon is that two wheat farms there have filed suit against Monsanto, charging that their businesses have been harmed by the discovery in the state of a field of genetically modified wheat from seeds that Monsanto developed and supposedly discontinued almost a decade ago. At the same time, the Center for Food Safety has filed a similar suit. It is possible that one or both of the suits could achieve class action status. So what do we know? Very little, as it happens. We know that there is a field with wheat that has been grown from genetically engineered seeds. We know Monsanto says it is shocked that this has happened, while cynics (and I'm one of them) believe that Monsanto is shocked like Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) was when he found out there was actually gambling going on at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca. I'm not going to litigate the whole GMO issue here. For one thing, it would take way too long and would be way too complicated. For another, I'm not nearly smart enough to understand it all, much less explain it. http://www.sott.net/article/262954-The-clear-and-utterly-unscientific-case-for-GMO-transparency Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:21:40 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262953-Captive-kids-forced-to-act-in-Shakespeares-day In Shakespeare's England, many kids were coerced into acting careers not by stage moms but by "child catchers," new research shows. Elizabethan-era boy players were prized in adult theater companies for their prepubescent looks and high-pitched voices, which allowed them to act in female roles alongside men. But some boy players were put into all-children acting troupes, and not all of them voluntarily; rather many were systematically exploited and abused, according to an Oxford University scholar. While writing his new book Shakespeare in Company (Oxford University Press), Bart van Es found that child catchers seized young boys on their way to school, handing them over to theater company bosses that forced the kids to perform on stage or else face whipping. Van Es even found documents that show Queen Elizabeth I herself signed commissions allowing theaters to kidnap children, he said. "Technically these warrants were designed to allow the Master of the Children to 'take up' boys for service in the Chapel Royal," which was a group of priests and singers established to serve the British monarchy, van Es explained. "But the reality was very different. It was well known that the Children of the Chapel Royal was really an acting company, and the Queen did nothing to intervene," van Es said in a statement. http://www.sott.net/article/262953-Captive-kids-forced-to-act-in-Shakespeares-day Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:51:57 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262952-Its-True-Some-parents-want-to-live-through-their-kids Yes, mom may really be pushing you into marching band because she always wanted to be drum major. New research finds that, consistent with what kids may believe, parents really do hope to live out unfulfilled ambitions through their children. Parents are more likely to hope that their child fulfills their own broken dreams when they see their kid as part of themselves, according to the study, which appears online today (June 19) in the journal PLOS ONE. "The child's achievements may come to function as a surrogate for parents' own unfulfilled ambitions," said study researcher Eddie Brummelman, a doctoral psychology student at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "In this way, a sense of oneness with their children may compel parents to transfer their unfulfilled ambitions on to them. http://www.sott.net/article/262952-Its-True-Some-parents-want-to-live-through-their-kids Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:46:36 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262951-Think-twice-How-the-guts-second-brain-influences-mood-and-well-being The emerging and surprising view of how the enteric nervous system in our bellies goes far beyond just processing the food we eat. As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our "second brain". A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body. http://www.sott.net/article/262951-Think-twice-How-the-guts-second-brain-influences-mood-and-well-being Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:42:05 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262950-Why-is-Africa-ripping-apart-Seismic-scan-may-tell Arrays of sensors stretching across more than 1,500 miles in Africa are now probing the giant crack in the Earth located there - a fissure linked with human evolution - to discover why and how continents get ripped apart. Over the course of millions of years, Earth's continents break up as they are slowly torn apart by the planet's tectonic forces. All the ocean basins on the Earth started as continental rifts, such as the Rio Grande rift in North America and Asia's Baikal rift in Siberia. The giant rift in Eastern Africa was born when Arabia and Africa began pulling away from each other about 26 million to 29 million years ago. Although this rift has grown less than 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) per year, the dramatic results include the formation and ongoing spread of the Red Sea, as well as the East African Rift Valley, the landscape that might have been home to the first humans. "Yet, in spite of numerous geophysical and geological studies, we still do not know much about the processes that tear open continents and form continental rifts," said researcher Stephen Gao, a seismologist at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Mo. This is partly because such research has mostly focused on mature segments of these chasms, as opposed to ones that are still in development, he explained. http://www.sott.net/article/262950-Why-is-Africa-ripping-apart-Seismic-scan-may-tell Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:36:38 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262949-Nuclear-energy-The-echo-chamber-effect "When do the risks of a technology become untenable?" About This Podcast After two weeks of traveling, Arnie is back in town to recount his adventures on this week's podcast. His first trip was to Canada to testify about the Pickering Nuclear Plant on Lake Ontario. His second trip was to southern California to speak at the conference "Fukushima Daiichi Accident: Lessons for California" alongside former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, and former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford. While Arnie was in California, we received the news that the San Onofre Nuclear Plant near San Diego was closing permanently. So, what happens at San Onofre now? Comment: Listen in, and find out. http://www.sott.net/article/262949-Nuclear-energy-The-echo-chamber-effect Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:31:05 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262948-Turkish-standing-man-inspires-hundreds-with-silent-vigil-in-Taksim-Square Erdem Gunduz - dubbed 'standing man' - stages eight-hour vigil and is joined by 300 people during silent protest A Turkish man has staged an eight-hour silent vigil in Istanbul's Taksim Square, the scene of violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters in recent weeks, inspiring hundreds of others to follow his lead. Erdem Gunduz said he wanted to take a stand against police stopping demonstrations near the square, the Dogan news agency reported. He stood silently, facing the Ataturk Cultural Centre which was draped in Turkish flags and a portrait of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, from 6pm on Monday. http://www.sott.net/article/262948-Turkish-standing-man-inspires-hundreds-with-silent-vigil-in-Taksim-Square Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:02:23 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262946-Fireball-from-space-seen-in-Oregon-sky A flaming meteor in the night sky could be seen in Oregon - with reported sightings from Marion to Washington counties - Saturday night. Note that it's the white orb to the left of the larger light, which is a street light. OMSI Planetarium Manager Jim Todd told KOIN 6 News the meteor was a combination of a "fireball and space junk." Todd said the fireball was visible for 7 seconds. He described it as being "a minus 10 on the brightness scale," which according to the International Comet Quarterly is nearly as bright as the full moon. http://www.sott.net/article/262946-Fireball-from-space-seen-in-Oregon-sky Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:55:43 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/248920-CIA-considers-Israel-one-of-its-biggest-spy-threats-but-the-US-continues-to-fund-their-military-adventures While US politicians boast strong ties with Israel, CIA officials suggest Israel is one of its biggest counter-intelligence threats. With spyware that rivals that of American agencies, it is extremely difficult to detect the extent of its spying. In a CIA ranking of the world's intelligence agencies and their willingness to help the US fight the War on Terror, Israel fell below Libya. Speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, current and former US intelligence officials blame Israel for incidents that indicate attempts to acquire secret information. One CIA station chief noticed that the communication equipment that he used to contact CIA headquarters from Israel had been tampered with, even though it was in a locked box. Another CIA officer based in Israel had his home broken into. While nothing was stolen, the officer noticed his food had been rearranged. In addition to home intrusions and equipment tampering, CIA officials also suspect that a leak by Israel led to the capture and presumed death of an important US agent inside Syria's chemical weapons program. http://www.sott.net/article/248920-CIA-considers-Israel-one-of-its-biggest-spy-threats-but-the-US-continues-to-fund-their-military-adventures Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:43:42 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262944-Biden-in-2006-NSA-data-mining-should-be-investigated-by-Congress 'Do as we say, not as we do!' Vice-President Joe Biden criticising the Bush administration for domestic spying back in those dark times before he and Obama rescued Americans from the descent into totalitarianism... http://www.sott.net/article/262944-Biden-in-2006-NSA-data-mining-should-be-investigated-by-Congress Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:12:56 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262943-Update-Thousands-evacuated-after-explosions-at-Russian-munitions-depot-storing-13-million-shells-with-1500-firefighters-sent-to-tackle-the-blaze More than 6,000 people were evacuated after explosions rocked a Russian munitions depot last night where up to 13million shells are stored. At least 30 people were injured when the shells exploded, causing huge blasts at the Chapaevsk military depot in the Samara region. Reports from Russia said about 1,500 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze and residents were evacuated from the nearby village of Nagorny, about 15km from the city of Chapaevsk. http://www.sott.net/article/262943-Update-Thousands-evacuated-after-explosions-at-Russian-munitions-depot-storing-13-million-shells-with-1500-firefighters-sent-to-tackle-the-blaze Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:13:37 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262942-4-Dangerous-foods-that-are-actually-good-for-you For decades, many scientists and the media have been waging a war against fat. The idea that fat caused harm was never based on any facts and has now been proven to be completely false. But yet this bias against perfectly healthy foods lingers on... foods that have been demonized for the sole reason that they are naturally high in saturated fats. Here are 4 foods that were considered "dangerous" due to their fat content, but are actually extremely healthy. http://www.sott.net/article/262942-4-Dangerous-foods-that-are-actually-good-for-you Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:55:47 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262941-Floods-close-Lourdes-pilgrimage-site-in-Pyrenees Heavy floods in southwest France have left two dead and forced the closure of the Catholic pilgrimage site in Lourdes and the evacuation of pilgrims from nearby hotels. Muddy floodwaters swirled Wednesday in the grotto where nearly 6 million believers from around the world, many gravely ill, come every year seeking miracles and healing. It has been a major pilgrimage site since a French girl's vision of the Virgin Mary there in 1858. Heavy rains around the region inundated town centers and swelled the Gave de Pau river, forcing road closures. Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on BFM television that a man in his seventies died Wednesday, swept away by the river. The Interior Ministry says it is the second person who has died in this week's rains. The spokesman for the Lourdes pilgrimage complex, Mathias Terrier said that the site in the foothills of the Pyrenees wasn't likely to reopen before the end of the week. Rescue services evacuated hundreds of people from nearby hotels. Authorities were particularly concerned with bringing weak and sick pilgrims to safety. http://www.sott.net/article/262941-Floods-close-Lourdes-pilgrimage-site-in-Pyrenees Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:46:31 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262940-Dimming-the-lights-can-increase-your-creativity-by-making-you-feel-free-from-constraints People in dim light are better at solving creative insight problems Those in normal light are no more creative than those in bright light And we can become more creative just by thinking about being in dim light Dimming the lights can increase your creativity levels, new research reveals. German researchers found that people sitting in dim light are significantly better able to solve creative insight problems than those working under normal or bright lights. However, people working under normal lights are no more creative than those in very bright light. http://www.sott.net/article/262940-Dimming-the-lights-can-increase-your-creativity-by-making-you-feel-free-from-constraints Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:35:11 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262939-Largest-methane-seep-in-the-world-found-off-the-eastern-coast-of-US On the seafloor just off of the U.S. East Coast lies a barely known world, explorations of which bring continual surprises. As recently as the mid-2000s, practically zero methane seeps - spots on the seafloor where gas leaks from the Earth's crust - were thought to exist off the East Coast; while one had been reported more than a decade ago, it was thought to be one of a kind. But in the past two years, additional studies have revealed a host of new areas of seafloor rich in seeps, said Laura Brothers, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. New technologies have allowed scientists to keep locating new seeps, including one that may be the largest in the world. The findings have changed geologists' understanding of the processes taking place beneath the seafloor. "These newly discovered [seafloor] communities show that there is much more seafloor methane venting then we previously thought, and suggests that there are many more seeps out there that we don't know about," Brothers said. An even larger, previously unknown vent was found off the coast of Virginia, in research by Steve Ross, a scientist at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Sandra Brooke, a scientist at Florida State University. Discovered near the Norfolk submarine canyon, the vent is the largest in the Atlantic, and possibly in all of the world's oceans, Ross told LiveScience. North America's continental shelf, the underwater edge of the continent that borders the Atlantic Ocean basin, is littered with underwater canyons etched by rivers thousands of years ago when the region was above sea level. http://www.sott.net/article/262939-Largest-methane-seep-in-the-world-found-off-the-eastern-coast-of-US Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:59:53 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262938-Scientists-fear-tension-building-on-dangerous-fault-near-Istanbul-Turkey German and Turkish scientists on Tuesday said they had pinpointed an extremely dangerous seismic zone less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the historic heart of Istanbul. Running under the Sea of Marmara just south of the city of some 15 million people, this segment of the notorious North Anatolian fault has been worryingly quiet in recent years, which may point to a buildup in tension, they wrote. "The block we identified reaches 10 kilometers (about six miles) deep along the fault zone and has displayed no seismic activity since measurements began over four years ago," said Marco Bohnhoff, a professor at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, near Berlin. "This could be an indication that the expected Marmara earthquake could originate there." The North Anatolian fault, created by the collision of the Anatolia Plate with the Eurasia Plate, runs 1,500 kilometers (950 miles) along northern Turkey. At the western tip of the fault, an earthquake took place in 1912 at Ganos near the Aegean Sea. On its eastern side, a domino series of earthquakes in 1939, 1942, 1951, 1967 and 1999 displaced the stress progressively westwards, bringing it ever closer to Istanbul. What is left now is a so-called earthquake gap under the Sea of Marmara, lying between the two fault stretches whose stress has been eased by the quakes. The "gap" itself, however, has not been relieved by an earthquake since 1766. Seeking a more precise view of the gap, the GFZ and Istanbul's Kandilli Earthquake Observatory set up a network of seismic monitors in the eastern part of the sea. They calculate that the Anatolian fault normally has a westward motion of between 25 and 30 millimeters (one to 1.2 inches) per year. http://www.sott.net/article/262938-Scientists-fear-tension-building-on-dangerous-fault-near-Istanbul-Turkey Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:57:13 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262937-First-farmers-were-also-inbred Humans have been mating with their relatives for at least 10,000 years. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds the earliest known evidence of deliberate inbreeding - including missing teeth - among farmers who lived in what is today southern Jordan. Although inbreeding over long periods can lead to a rise in genetic defects, the team concludes that it may have helped prehistoric peoples make the transition from hunting and gathering to village life. Researchers agree that the best evidence for family ties is DNA. For example, ancient DNA from a group of Neandertal skeletons found in a Spanish cave showed that they belonged to the same extended family. But DNA often preserves poorly, especially at early farming sites from the so-called Neolithic period in the Near East where high temperatures and burials under house floors or in shallow graves easily degrade the genetic material. So some researchers have searched for signs of family relationships in the skeletons themselves, looking for rare anomalies that might suggest shared genetic heritage. A team led by Kurt Alt, an anthropologist at the University of Mainz in Germany, examined the skeletons of individuals buried at the Neolithic site of Basta, in southern Jordan. Between about 9500 and 9000 years ago, up to 1000 early farmers lived there; the site was excavated in the 1980s and 1990s by an international team of archaeologists. At least 56 skeletons were found in one area, perhaps a graveyard. In earlier research, Alt had identified more than 100 skeletal traits that can be used to determine family ties, most of which concern features of the teeth and jaws. Although inbreeding with very close relatives - such as between brothers and sisters, parents and children, or even cousins - boosts the incidence of genetic disease, mating with even more distant family members can increase the prevalence of traits that indicate family relationships. So his team set about looking at the upper jaws, or maxillae, of the Basta skeletons, which were well preserved in 28 individuals. http://www.sott.net/article/262937-First-farmers-were-also-inbred Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:44:27 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262936-Baked-Alaska-Unusual-heat-wave-hits-49th-state A heat wave hitting Alaska may not rival the blazing heat of Phoenix or Las Vegas, but to residents of the 49th state, the days of hot weather feel like a stifling oven - or a tropical paradise. With temperatures topping 80 degrees in Anchorage, and higher in other parts of the state, people have been sweltering in a place where few homes have air conditioning. They're sunbathing and swimming at local lakes, hosing down their dogs and cleaning out supplies of fans in at least one local hardware store. Mid-June normally brings high temperatures in the 60s in Anchorage, and just a month ago, it was still snowing. The weather feels like anywhere but Alaska to 18-year-old Jordan Rollison, who was sunbathing with three friends and several hundred others lolling at the beach of Anchorage's Goose Lake. "I love it, I love it," Rollison said. "I've never seen a summer like this, ever." State health officials even took the unusual step of posting a Facebook message reminding people to slather on the sunscreen. Some people aren't so thrilled, complaining that it's just too hot. "It's almost unbearable to me," said Lorraine Roehl, who has lived in Anchorage for two years after moving here from the community of Sand Point in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. "I don't like being hot. I'm used to cool ocean breeze." http://www.sott.net/article/262936-Baked-Alaska-Unusual-heat-wave-hits-49th-state Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:41:51 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262935-UK-councillor-claims-to-have-fathered-alien-child A Labour politician has defended his beliefs in extra-terrestrial life - after claiming to have fathered a child with an alien. Married father-of-three Simon Parkes, who represents Stakesby on Whitby Town Council, said his wife had rowed with him after revealing he had a child called Zarka with an alien he refers to as the Cat Queen. The 53-year-old driving instructor said he has sexual relations with the alien about four times a year. "What will happen is that we will hold hands and I will say 'I'm ready' and then the technology I don't understand will take us up to a craft orbiting the earth," he explained. "My wife found out about it and was very unhappy, clearly. That caused a few problems, but it is not on a human level, so I don't see it as wrong. Councillor Parkes, who also claims his "real mother" is a 9ft green alien with eight fingers, said people only claim he is mad because they have not shared his experiences and that the encounters don't affect his work on behalf of Whitby residents. http://www.sott.net/article/262935-UK-councillor-claims-to-have-fathered-alien-child Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:32:35 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262934-Yowie-sighted-in-New-South-Wales-witness-asks-to-stay-anonymous Call it what you will: A Yeren, a Yeti or a Yowie, but the fact remains that people the world over keep seeing these big hairy buggers lurking in the night. The latest sighting took place recently just north of Bexhill when a Lismore resident and music videographer spied the classic creature crossing a moonlit Bangalow Road. The witness, who has asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, said he was driving back home from a night of filming at Eltham and had just turned onto the Bangalow Road heading for Lismore when he spied a creature jumping a barbed wire paddock fence before briefly pausing at the edge of the road. Suddenly the beast moved across the two lanes of bitumen, raising his arm to apparently shield its eyes from the bright high beam glare of the approaching car. "I would have seen it for between 20 and 30 seconds," the witness recalled. "It was really moving at the time. It leapt the fence no problem. "All I can remember was seeing this large black object with a solid build, lanky legs and long lanky arms. "It wasn't clothed ... it wasn't wearing clothes like a human." http://www.sott.net/article/262934-Yowie-sighted-in-New-South-Wales-witness-asks-to-stay-anonymous Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:25:38 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262933-Ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-Theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and animal welfare. But if you want to minimise animal suffering and promote more sustainable agriculture, adopting a vegetarian diet might be the worst possible thing you could do. Renowned ethicist Peter Singer says if there is a range of ways of feeding ourselves, we should choose the way that causes the least unnecessary harm to animals. Most animal rights advocates say this means we should eat plants rather than animals. It takes somewhere between two to ten kilos of plants, depending on the type of plants involved, to produce one kilo of animal. Given the limited amount of productive land in the world, it would seem to some to make more sense to focus our culinary attentions on plants, because we would arguably get more energy per hectare for human consumption. Theoretically this should also mean fewer sentient animals would be killed to feed the ravenous appetites of ever more humans. But before scratching rangelands-produced red meat off the "good to eat" list for ethical or environmental reasons, let's test these presumptions. Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in: at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein more environmental damage, and a great deal more animal cruelty than does farming red meat. http://www.sott.net/article/262933-Ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-Theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:16:41 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262932-41-wounded-7-dead-in-Chicago-weekend-shootings In one of the most violent weekends Chicago has seen since the temperature has risen, seven people were shot dead and at at over 40 were wounded in incidents, police said. Overnight from Saturday into Father's Day, six were killed and 13 other shootings happened across the city. The bleak news comes after Chicago experienced a 34 percent drop in murders compared with last year this period, a rate the city hadn't seen since the 1960s. A series of deadly shootings On Friday, the weekend's first fatality happened at 11:34 p.m. on the West Side of Chicago. Police said two men were shot during a "dispute," according to NBC Chicago. A 24-year-old man was taken to Loyola University Medical Center and later pronounced dead, police said. According to reports, the other man, a 23-year-old, suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital. On Saturday, 21-year-old Ricardo Herrera was shot and killed at about 10:50 p.m. when two others were wounded in the Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side of Chicago, police said. Later that night at 11:45 p.m., police said a 16-year-old boy was shot by a gunman who rode on a bicycle on the West Side of the city. According to reports, he tried to escape, but collapsed steps away from where he was shot. The boy sustained gunshot wounds to the back and arm, police said. He was pronounced dead at 1:37 a.m. at Illinois Masonic Medical Center. Police said Sunday the teen had gang affiliations, according to NBC Chicago, and although his death was ruled a homicide, police said no one was in custody as of Sunday morning. http://www.sott.net/article/262932-41-wounded-7-dead-in-Chicago-weekend-shootings Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:36:09 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262931-The-bad-science-scandal-how-fact-fabrication-is-damaging-UKs-global-name-for-research After a string of high-profile cases, a new agreement between scientists and the people who fund them aims to usher in a new era of 'research purity' Britain's leading science institutions will be told on Monday that they will be stripped of many millions of pounds in research grants if they employ rogue researchers who fake the results of experiments, The Independent has learnt. The clampdown comes as retractions of scientific claims by medical journals are on course to top 500 for the first time in 2013 - having been just 20 a year in the late 1990s, when Andrew Wakefield notoriously claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism in children. In April, the UK's first researcher was jailed for falsifying data over a prolonged period. The Government is concerned that Britain's prized second place in global research behind the US will be at threatened if more fact-fabricators are exposed. It knows that hundreds of thousands of jobs could easily go to foreign rivals if British laboratories do not keep coming up with new product ideas, to be made by major multinational companies in UK factories. All of the country's 133 universites and colleges of higher education are being forced to sign a new Concordat for Research Integrity - having been warned by major fund providers that those who do not will be refused access to more than £10 billion in research grants funded each year by British taxpayers - and as much again from the private sector. A spokesman for Universities UK, which chaired negotations with the grant providers, said: "From next year, universities in the UK will have to prove compliance with the research integrity concordat in order to receive research grant. They are doing this to help demonstrate to government, business, international partners and the wider public that they can continue to have confidence in the research." Retractions of medical claims alone in 2013 - logged by the Retraction Watch blog - are certain to be more than 400, and could easily top 500. Some result from genuine mistakes, several plagiarise other scientists' work, breakthroughs that haven't been checked. But as many as one in 10 of them contain lies. http://www.sott.net/article/262931-The-bad-science-scandal-how-fact-fabrication-is-damaging-UKs-global-name-for-research Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:46:55 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262930-Four-hospitalized-amid-explosions-at-military-range-in-Samara-region Five artillery projectiles exploded at a range near Chapayevsk, the Samara region, at about 7:30 p.m. Moscow time. Two fire trains were sent to the scene, and Defense Ministry and Emergency Situations Ministry special hardware has also been engaged in dealing with the emergency situation. Samara regional police spokesman Sergei Goldstein said there were about 13 million rounds of ammunition at the range depot. The range had been cordoned off, and roads leading to it blocked, he said. Four people have been injured in explosions of projectiles at a range in Chapayevsk, the Samara region, a Samara medical source told Interfax. http://www.sott.net/article/262930-Four-hospitalized-amid-explosions-at-military-range-in-Samara-region Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:09:13 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262640-Israeli-involvement-in-NSA-spying Cybersecurity Law Is No Threat To Privacy: NSA Chief Gen. Alexander It doesn't surprise. On June 8, Haaretz headlined "What was the Israeli involvement in collecting US communications intel for NSA?" More on that below. On April 3, 2012, James Bamford headlined "Shady Companies with Ties to Israel Wiretap for US for the NSA. He said NSA chief General Keith Alexander's "having a busy year." He's "cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency's greatly expanded eavesdropping network." "In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia." http://www.sott.net/article/262640-Israeli-involvement-in-NSA-spying Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:20:37 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262929-Chronic-wasting-disease-in-may-be-impossible-to-eliminate-in-Alberta-Saskatchewan-deer-elk Experts say it may not be possible to eliminate chronic wasting disease in deer and elk in Canada. The fatal infectious disease is so well established in Saskatchewan and Alberta that the federal government and some provinces are rethinking how to deal with what is commonly known as CWD. In 2005, Ottawa announced a national strategy to control chronic wasting disease in the hope of finding ways to eradicate it. Now the emphasis is shifting to preventing CWD from spreading, especially in the wild. "We have to realize that we may not be able to eradicate this disease currently from Canada, given that we don't have any effective tools, so we may be looking at switching from eradication to control," said Penny Greenwood, national manager of domestic disease control for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The agency says it is working with the provinces and the game-ranching industry to come up with a better plan, perhaps by next spring. "We feel that the current program that we have had in place for chronic wasting disease ... is not effective in achieving its goals," Greenwood said. CWD is caused by abnormal proteins called prions and is similar to mad cow disease. There is no vaccine against it. Symptoms can take months or years to develop. They include weight loss, tremors, lack of co-ordination, paralysis and, ultimately, death. http://www.sott.net/article/262929-Chronic-wasting-disease-in-may-be-impossible-to-eliminate-in-Alberta-Saskatchewan-deer-elk Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:10:59 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262928-PRISM-for-your-Mind-NSA-WikiLeaks-and-Israel prism (przm) n. 1. A solid figure whose bases or ends have the same size and shape and are parallel to one another, and each of whose sides is a parallelogram. 2. A transparent body of this form, often of glass and usually with triangular ends, used for separating white light passed through it into a spectrum or for reflecting beams of light. 3. A cut-glass object, such as a pendant of a chandelier. 4. A crystal form consisting of three or more similar faces parallel to a single axis. 5. A medium that misrepresents whatever is seen through it. [Alternatively...] prism noun ˈpri-zəm [...] 4. a medium that distorts, slants, or colors whatever is viewed through it The ongoing 'NSA surveillance scandal' has many parallels, and some direct links, with the disclosures made by WikiLeaks, the organisation its leader Julian Assange described as the "the intelligence agency of the people". While we took satisfaction in seeing government and corporate crimes come back to haunt their perpetrators, SOTT.net remained cautious about lauding Assange or the WikiLeaks organisation as heroic. What did any of the 'Iraq War Logs' or U.S. State Department 'diplomatic cables' reveal that was not already publicly available information? Obviously some details were new, but they didn't change the fact that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal under international law and that everyone involved had either committed or were ancillary to war crimes. Nor did anything so damaging come out to bring the perpetrators to justice or to catalyse real political change that would actually improve ordinary people's welfare. Things, as you may have noticed in recent years, have only gotten worse for the masses. So is Edward Snowden, the U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower currently 'on the run' after disclosing 'top secret documents' to major media outlets, a hero or traitor? Is he neither? We discussed this and more in last Sunday's SOTT Talk Radio show on the NSA leaks. Have a listen: http://www.sott.net/article/262928-PRISM-for-your-Mind-NSA-WikiLeaks-and-Israel Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:04:46 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262927-Debt-burdened-poor-students-subsidize-multibillion-dollar-college-sports Student loans have eclipsed credit cards as the number one cause of debt, but it might come as a surprise to struggling students that part of their college tuition is subsidizing the multibillion-dollar world of college sports. According to research by Jeff Smith at the University of South Carolina Upstate, 227 public colleges at the NCAA Division 1 level made more than $2 billion in athletic fees from students during the 2010-2011 school year. Ironically, the colleges and universities with the higher percentages of poorer students (with large debt) are the institutions charging the highest "student fees" for sports. All students have to bear the burden of college athletic programs, but few actually benefit. Critics say this creates a "regressive tax" on low income students. http://www.sott.net/article/262927-Debt-burdened-poor-students-subsidize-multibillion-dollar-college-sports Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:02 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262926-Tornado-touches-down-at-Denver-International-Airport Radar indicated a tornado briefly touched down Tuesday over the east runways of Denver International Airport, where thousands of people took shelter in bathrooms, stairwells and other safe spots until the dangerous weather passed, officials said. Airport spokeswoman Laura Coale reported no damage. Nine flights were diverted elsewhere during a tornado warning that lasted about 40 minutes, she said. A 97 mph wind gust was measured at the airport before communication with instruments there was briefly knocked out, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Fredin. Chris Polk, a construction foreman, was working on a renovation project just outside the airport's main concourse when he got the tornado warning at 2:15 p.m., looked up and saw a funnel cloud. He and his crew ran inside and took shelter with some 100 people, including luggage-toting passengers, inside a basement break room as tornado sirens sounded. "It got pretty crazy around here," Polk said. Asked whether he was nervous when he spotted the funnel cloud, he shrugged. "No, I'm from Missouri," he said. Everyone inside the break room was calm, Polk added. http://www.sott.net/article/262926-Tornado-touches-down-at-Denver-International-Airport Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:29:22 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262925-Cheating-ourselves-of-sleep-negatively-affects-our-health-memory-creativity-and-emotional-stability Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are, you are among the many millions who unwittingly shortchange themselves on sleep. Research shows that most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. Failing to get enough sleep night after night can compromise your health and may even shorten your life. From infancy to old age, the effects of inadequate sleep can profoundly affect memory, learning, creativity, productivity and emotional stability, as well as your physical health. According to sleep specialists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, among others, a number of bodily systems are negatively affected by inadequate sleep: the heart, lungs and kidneys; appetite, metabolism and weight control; immune function and disease resistance; sensitivity to pain; reaction time; mood; and brain function. Poor sleep is also a risk factor for depression and substance abuse, especially among people with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Anne Germain, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. People with PTSD tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep, which keeps their brains in a heightened state of alertness. http://www.sott.net/article/262925-Cheating-ourselves-of-sleep-negatively-affects-our-health-memory-creativity-and-emotional-stability Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:15:45 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262924-Obamas-weapons-for-peace-program They looked like two dejected schoolboys in front of the headmaster by the end of the two-hour Putin-Obama summit at the sidelines of the Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland. But as astonishing as the sound of silence was the fact that, on Syria, the former KGB guy was trying to save the "leading from behind" dude from himself. President Barack Obama coined the monster euphemism that they had "different perspectives" on Syria. He said, deceptively, "We want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible, so we will instruct our teams to continue to work on the potential of a Geneva follow-up." If Obama was really trying to solve Syria "through political means" he would not have pre-emptively bombed the Geneva II talks with his "weapons-for-peace" program, as in weaponizing only the "good" Syrian "rebels" and only with a few "non-lethal" toys (that's the bottom line of Washington's spin). "If possible" in this case does translate into "impossible". As for the Geneva II talks, they don't rate anything better than "potential" because Obama knows the myriad, squabbling factions of the Syrian opposition will boycott it. Sometimes it sounded like Putin wanted to put Obama out of his misery (as in "Assad must go" but I have no clue how to make him obey me). He was visibly trying to impress to Obama that expanding the proxy war in Syria would make the current - horrible - status quo look like a walk in the park. http://www.sott.net/article/262924-Obamas-weapons-for-peace-program Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:57:56 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262923-Huge-dead-zone-predicted-in-Gulf-of-Mexico A very large dead zone, an area of water with no or very little oxygen, is expected to form in the Gulf of Mexico this year - a trend in recent years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Computer models put together by scientists predict that the zone will cover an area between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles (18,871 to 22,173 square kilometers) this summer, the typical time for such zones to form. The large end of the estimate is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, and would be the largest dead zone ever recorded. The biggest one recorded to date, in 2002, reached 8,481 square miles (21,966 square km). Meanwhile, models predict the dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay will be smaller than usual. http://www.sott.net/article/262923-Huge-dead-zone-predicted-in-Gulf-of-Mexico Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:45:08 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262922-Not-Brave-Melissa-Etheridge-calls-Angelina-Jolies-double-mastectomy-most-fearful-choice In case you've been completely unplugged and are just tuning in now, Angelina Jolie revealed last month that she had a preventative double mastectomy. The controversial procedure nearly broke the Internet, with supporters applauding her bravery and others scorning American healthcare. Her husband Brad Pitt called her choice "absolutely heroic," but not everyone in Hollywood is as in awe of the actress - notably breast cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge. During a recent interview with the Washington Blade, the 52-year-old rocker was asked her opinion on Jolie's double mastectomy, and her sentiments did not echo those of other celebrities who lauded the 38-year-old mother of six. Etheridge said, "I wouldn't call it the brave choice." She added, "I actually think it's the most fearful choice you can make when confronting anything with cancer." http://www.sott.net/article/262922-Not-Brave-Melissa-Etheridge-calls-Angelina-Jolies-double-mastectomy-most-fearful-choice Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:10:38 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262921-Meteorite-found-in-Minnesota-corn-field An Arlington Minnesota couple discovered a strange rock in one of their corn fields. Bruce Lilienthal says he was removing rocks when he discovered the large flat object, "It was just party sticking out of the ground. I picked it up and noticed it was a lot heavier than what it looked." The Lilienthals say they had some time to research the strange stone, and discovered that the object was probably not a stone, but a meteorite instead. A representative from the University of Minnesota drove out to the farm to verify that the rock is a meteorite. The expert informed the Lilienthals that there was one found about three miles away from their farm 120 years ago. There's no way of knowing when the meteorite the Lilienthals found made landfall. The meteorite weighs in at 33 pounds. http://www.sott.net/article/262921-Meteorite-found-in-Minnesota-corn-field Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:06:31 -0500 http://www.sott.net/article/262920-Blind-mans-brain-still-responds-to-eye-contact-with-unhappy-faces-and-averted-gazes How much of this world does your mind actually see? Potentially more than you think, according to series of studies on a blind man whose brain can still record and respond to the facial expressions from others without him being aware of it. These observations, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest the existence of visual brain pathways that register hostile or unhappy visages without our conscious knowledge. The man in question, who the study's authors refer to as Patient TN, suffered two strokes in 2003 that almost completely eradicated his primary visual cortex. This brain region, located at the back of the skull, is responsible for processing visual input from the eyes and shipping it to the rest of the brain. Thus, Patient TN's blindness is caused by a faulty brain circuitry rather than eye damage. Indeed, one could assume that his eyes are still transmitting visual information to his brain, but "nobody is home" to collect the message. Without his primary visual cortex, you might have predicted that Patient TN should be utterly blind, but follow-up experiments at the University of Geneva suggested the contrary. In 2005, neuropsychologist Dr. Alan Pegna and colleagues placed a series of pictures with facial expressions in front of Patient TN's eyes and asked him to guess the emotions being portrayed in the photos. Amazingly Patient TN could accurately distinguish between happy and angry faces 60 percent of the time, which is a success rate that could not be attributed to mere chance. http://www.sott.net/article/262920-Blind-mans-brain-still-responds-to-eye-contact-with-unhappy-faces-and-averted-gazes Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:51:35 -0500