Best of the Web:


Meteor

Best of the Web: 2012 saw record number of meteorite falls so far this century

Mike Gilmer
lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:02 UTC
Image
Peter Jenniskens about to collect some meteorites where they fell in Sutters Mill, California.
The year 2012 saw a new record set for most meteorite falls in a single year in the 21st century. I started keeping detailed records of every new meteorite fall that is recovered or reported by reliable sources. Some of these have not been officially approved by the Meteoritical Society yet, but that is not unusual.

In 2012, eleven (11) new meteorite falls fit the above criteria to be included on my list. Prior to 2012, the most falls in a single 21st century year (since 2000), was ten falls in 2008.

On average, since the year 2000, we have averaged about 5 recovered meteorite falls per year that are either officially accepted by the Meteoritical Society or verified by reliable sources (such as the 2008 Zunhua meteorite fall, which has not been officially approved yet, but is a meteorite nonetheless).

The first verified fall of 2012 was a few days before Valentine's Day on February 11, 2012. This was the so-called "XINING-Huangzhong" meteorite,
which has not been officially approved yet, but was analyzed and is likely an L6-chondrite.

Comment: Careful what you wish for...

Meteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana - Media and Government Cover It Up

NASA reinvents history to make increasing numbers of fireballs seem normal

Increased meteor smoke: Noctilucent clouds brightening and spreading south

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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: White House wins fight to keep drone killings of Americans secret


RT.com
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:22 UTC
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© Reuters / Pascal Lauener
A federal judge issued a 75-page ruling on Wednesday that declares that the US Justice Department does not have a legal obligation to explain the rationale behind killing Americans with targeted drone strikes.

United States District Court Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her finding this week that the Obama administration was largely in the right by rejecting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times for materials pertaining to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to execute three US citizens abroad in late 2011 [pdf].

Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both US nationals with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, were killed on September 30 of that year using drone aircraft; days later, al-Awlaki's teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was executed in the same manner. Although the Obama administration has remained largely quiet about the killings in the year since, a handful of statements made from senior White House officials, including Pres. Barack Obama himself, have provided some but little insight into the Executive Branch's insistence that the killings were all justified and constitutionally-sound. Attempts from the ACLU and the Times via FOIA requests to find out more have been unfruitful, though, which spawned a federal lawsuit that has only now been decided in court.
Siding with the defendants in what can easily be considered as cloaked in skepticism, Judge McMahon writes that the Obama White House has been correct in refusing the FOIA requests filed by the plaintiffs.
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MIB

Flashback Best of the Web: Evidence of multiple shooters at Aurora Theater massacre covered up

Michael Kelley
Business Insider
Tue, 07 Aug 2012 09:37 UTC
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A blood trail leading TO the exit of the Aurora theater. Also see the white car where police found Holmes locked inside.
At a July 20 press conference Aurora police Chief Dan Oates said investigators were confident that James Holmes acted alone in the largest mass shooting in U.S. history by casualties and that authorities were "not looking for any other suspects."

But doubters are citing official evidence to question that Holmes was the only shooter, or a shooter at all.

The argument of the skeptics can be split into three categories: the discovery of Holmes, the real-time testimony on police radio transmissions and the extra evidence at the scene.

The discovery of Holmes

During the press conference, Oates said that Holmes was "apprehended outside his White Hyundai parked in the back of the theater" and that he "surrendered without any significant incident."

According to police radio transmissions (at 6:15), an officer found "a suspect in a gas mask" and another officer asked "Is that the dude in the white car you're by?" After a few transmissions, an officer asks (at 6:49) "That white car in the rear of the lot - is that a suspect?" The response is "Yes! We've got rifles, gas mask, he's detained right now, I've got an open door going into the theater."

Skeptics cite this exchange as evidence that Holmes was found in his locked car with a gas mask on and heavily drugged - not outside the car as Oates said - which would have forced first responders to break the passenger side window and get a white stretcher board in preparation to transport him.

Comment: Clearly the conclusion to be drawn from their withholding the court records is that it directly contradicts the lone gunman narrative. This would mean that a cover-up has taken place thanks to the collusion of government and media. The logical reason for this cover-up is that it was done to protect the real perpetrators. Coupled with the evidence we've seen of a cover-up underway concerning the the Sandy Hook school massacre, it appears that some element high up within the US power structure is sending out death squads to terrorise people into submitting to their rule and accepting the encroaching police state.

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Yoda

Best of the Web: Martha Stout demolishes Kevin Dutton's book on the 'wisdom' of psychopaths

Martha Stout
The New Republic
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:10 UTC
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Another 'punk rock' psychologist?
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, by Kevin Dutton

Years ago, as a student, I attended some lectures by a prominent anthropologist who regaled his listeners with odd and engaging stories about a group of indigenous people he had lived among in a far-flung corner of the planet. The tales stuck in the mind. Indeed, some of them were so amazing that I came away from his talks sure that counterintuitive but vital truths about human behavior had just been revealed. Only during the final lecture was I granted an inkling that these truths might not bear much relationship to reality. Fairly gleeful in her disdain, one of his indentured graduate assistants whispered to me that, in the field, the anthropologist had offered his subjects chocolate bars in exchange for stories about themselves - the more fantastic the stories, the more plentiful the candy. Avidly scrawling notes, his audience had become an illustration of how easily the foreign and the fascinating can assume the aura of science.

Though I have no reason to think chocolate was involved, I am concerned that a similar phenomenon may occur among readers of The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton, a research psychologist at the University of Oxford. Dutton's eye-catching thesis is this: "Psychopathy is like sunlight. Overexposure can hasten one's demise in grotesque, carcinogenic fashion. But regulated exposure at controlled and optimal levels can have a significant positive impact on well-being and quality of life." Psychopathy, proposes Dutton, is "personality with a tan."
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Comet

Best of the Web: Electric Comets: The "dirty snowball theory" of quackademia easily debunked

Michael Goodspeed
Thunderbolts.info
Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:32 UTC
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Snow Globe Xmas

Best of the Web: Christmas message from Syria citizens in Damascus


Newsline
Fri, 28 Dec 2012 05:15 UTC
As printed in the 'Newsline' paper on 24th December 2012

Our lives are being made hell by the armed groups. We are all wearing coats in the house. We are freezing in the winter. There is no fuel. There is no bread.

Yet, every western government is pretending to be speaking for the Syrian people. In fact, they are completely ignoring what the Syrian people want. The Syrian people want peace, security and return to normal life.

The Syrian people have had enough with the unscrupulous world powers playing with the plight of the Syrian people and causing us more suffering while they reside in palaces and hotels, travel with bodyguards and worry about feeling too full at the dinner tables.

They don't worry about the million Syrian people who are shivering in their beds either out of fear, cold or hunger. We tell them, please stop meddling under the pretext of helping the Syrian people....

All we want is a return to life when we could walk in the street without fear of being kidnapped, sniped at or shot.

We want to return to life when people celebrate Ramadan, Eid al-Adha, Christmas, New Year and Easter without mourning the death of beloved ones.

We want to return to normal life where asking a stranger for directions does not scare you. Where you could get into a taxi or go into a shop without fearing for your life.

Return to normal life where you go into your own home and do not fear the cold and the chill of the winter.

Return to normal life where you do not have to fear not being able to get medicine, milk or bread for your kids tomorrow.

Return to normal life where we are not fearing for the lives of our children if they leave the house or attend school.

Return to normal life where we are proud of the achievements of Syrian kids at school and not, as seen now on the media, beheading their fellow Syrians on the orders of the foreigners.

Return to normal life where everyone is saluting the other and not fearing them.

Return to normal life where we are proud to be Syrians.

Comment: In short, a return to normal life in Syria as it was under the government of Bashar al-Assad.

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Vader

Best of the Web: YOU are the 'terrorists': FOIA documents reveal FBI was monitoring and infiltrating Occupy Wall Street movement as a 'potential terror threat' before it even began


Democracy Now!
Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:28 UTC
Once-secret documents reveal the FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street from its earliest days and treated the nonviolent movement as a potential terrorist threat. Internal government records show Occupy was treated as a potential threat when organizing first began in August of 2011. Counterterrorism agents were used to track Occupy activities, despite the internal acknowledgment that the movement opposed violent tactics. The monitoring expanded across the country as Occupy grew into a national movement, with FBI agents sharing information with businesses, local police agencies and universities. We're joined by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which obtained the FBI documents through the Freedom of Information Act. "We can see, decade after decade, with each social justice movement, that the FBI conducts itself in the same role over and over again, which is to act really as the secret police of the establishment against the people," Verheyden-Hilliard says. [

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TV

Best of the Web: Americans Chained by Illusion

Abby Martin, 'Breaking the Set'
Russia Today, US Edition
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 16:24 UTC
Abby Martin takes a look back at philosopher Plato's the 'Allegory of the Cave' and its application to today's society.

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Vader

Best of the Web: End of the world? Oliver Stone on Obama's empire, Big Brother's creepiest toys

Abby Martin, 'Breaking the Set'
Russia Today, US Edition
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 05:37 UTC
Abby Martin Breaks the Set on the End of the World', ínterviews Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick about their documentary series, the Untold History of the United States, and looks at the Top 5 Surveillance Toys of Big Brother in 2012.

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Fireball 2

Best of the Web: 2013: The year of the comets

Nicholas West
Activist Post
Sat, 08 Dec 2012 12:23 UTC
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© Robert H. McNaughtComet McNaught passing through in 2007.
Some ancient cultures referred to them as "the Menace of the Universe" and "the Harbinger of Doom." Comets have almost universally been viewed by the ancients as messengers or omens carrying bad news from the gods.

In the midst of our busy lives it's difficult to keep in mind that we reside on a ball that's corkscrewing through space around a ball of gas called our sun, which is also sweeping through our galaxy.

The ancients didn't have distractions like TVs and the Internet. They looked to the sky for clues and guidance for life on Earth, and comets brought mythology of angry gods and instilled fear in them.

Strangely, in more modern times, comets have been associated with actual dark events.

According to NASA:
Comets' influence on cultures is not limited simply to tales of myth and legend, though. Comets throughout history have been blamed for some of history's darkest times. In Switzerland, Halley's Comet was blamed for earthquakes, illnesses, red rain, and even the births of two-headed animals.

The Romans recorded that a fiery comet marked the assassination of Julius Caesar, and another was blamed for the extreme bloodshed during the battle between Pompey and Caesar. In England, Halley's Comet was blamed for bringing the Black Death. The Incas, in South America, even record a comet having foreshadowed Francisco Pizarro's arrival just days before he brutally conquered them.

Comets and disaster became so intertwined that Pope Calixtus III even excommunicated Halley's Comet as an instrument of the devil, and a meteorite, from a comet, became enshrined as one of the most venerated objects in all of Islam.
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