Best of the Web:


Crusader

Best of the Web: Cosmic Propaganda Alert! World Will End on May 21, Says Doomsday Code Author Robert Fitzpatrick

Neil Graves & Lukas I. Alpert
NY Daily News
Thu, 12 May 2011 02:37 UTC
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© Mark Bonifacio/NY Daily NewsAuthor of The Doomsday Code, Robert Fitzpatrick, poses next to an ad he purchased at a bus stop on Victory Blvd. in Staten Island.
Robert Fitzpatrick is so convinced the end is near he's betting his life savings on it.

The retired MTA employee has pumped $140,000 into a NYC Transit ad campaign to warn everyone the world will end next Saturday.

"Global Earthquake! The Greatest Ever - Judgment Day: May 21," the ad declares above a placid picture of night over Jerusalem with a clock that's about to strike midnight.

"I'm trying to warn people about what's coming," the 60-year-old Staten Island resident said. "People who have an understanding [of end times] have an obligation to warn everyone."

His doomsday warning has appeared on 1,000 placards on subway cars, at a cost of $90,000, and at bus shelters around the city, for $50,000 more.

Fitzpatrick's millenial mania began after he retired in 2006 and began listening to California evangelist Harold Camping's "End of Days" predictions.
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Evil Rays

Best of the Web: Unexplained Creepy, Bizarre, Strange Noises in the Sky Videos


DBKP - Death By 1000 Papercuts
Tue, 10 May 2011 15:28 UTC

Comment: The content of this article was removed at the request of the copyright owner.

Subject: Copyright Infringement Notice from Deathby1000Papercuts.com
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:32:43 -0500
From: Ginn A Veve
To: sott@sott.net

Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement

This notice is to Sott.net, the next notice will be sent to your server.
This is the second notice I've sent your website which was ignored. Your
website has pilfered more than one of our posts at
Deathby1000Papercuts.com.

I've read the claptrap posted at your site on how you obtain your
'material'. If your website does not take down our posts and stop
reproducing posts from our website without our permission we'll: 1.
contact your server, and 2, write several long posts about the methods
your website uses to obtain 'free' material without authorization, a
violation of copyright infringement. Our posts, far less 'esoteric' than
the psychobabble dribble found in your 'About Sott.net" section.

The current copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on
http://www.sott.net/article/240673-Hawaii-Earthquake-Swarm-Precursor-to-Larger-Quake-in-Japan-Baja-Mexico-****

The URLs where our copyrighted material is located include
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2012/01/hawaii-earthquake-swarm-precursor-to-larger-quake-in-japan-baja-mexico/****

You can reach me at ginnavive@gmail.com
for further information or clarification. My phone number is
1-304-810-0720 and my mailing address is 100 Limestone, Moundsville,
WV 26041.

**I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials
described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the
copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the
notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am
authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is
allegedly infringed.

Elaine Marlowe, Deathby1000Papercuts.com
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Evil Rays

Best of the Web: Scientists Cast Doubt on TSA Tests of Full-Body Scanners

Michael Grabell
Pro Publica
Mon, 16 May 2011 01:11 UTC
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© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesA sign at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint instructs passengers about the use of the full-body scanner at O'Hare International Airport on March 15, 2010 in Chicago, Ill.
The Transportation Security Administration says its full-body X-ray scanners are safe and that radiation from a scan is equivalent to what's received in about two minutes of flying. The company that makes them says it's safer than eating a banana.

But some scientists with expertise in imaging and cancer say the evidence made public to support those claims is unreliable. And in a new letter sent to White House science adviser John Holdren, they question why the TSA won't make the scanners available for independent testing by outside scientists.

The machines, which are designed to reveal objects hidden under clothing, have the potential to close a significant security gap for the TSA because metal detectors can't find explosives or ceramic knives, which can be just as sharp as the box cutters that hijackers used on 9/11.

They are also important for TSA's public relations battle over the alternative, the "enhanced pat-down," which has bred an epidemic of viral videos: A 6-year-old girl is touched from head to toe. A former Miss USA says she was violated. A software programmer warns a screener, "If you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested."

After the underwear bomber tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day 2009, the TSA ramped up deployment of full-body scanners and plans to have them at nearly every security line by 2014.
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Vader

Best of the Web: US Federal Court: Talking Back to a Cop Can Cost Your Job


TheNewspaper.com
Sat, 14 May 2011 21:22 UTC
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Speaking your mind to a police officer during a traffic stop is not free speech, according to the Tenth Circuit US Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel ruled Thursday that Colorado Springs, Colorado Police Officer Duaine Peters did nothing wrong in having Miriam Leverington fired from her job as a nurse at Memorial Health System for talking back after he wrote her a speeding citation.

Peters had been running a speed trap on an exit from Interstate 25 on December, 17, 2008. He pulled over Leverington and the interaction quickly became "less than cordial." After being handed her ticket, Leverington told Peters that she hoped she never had him as a patient.

"I hope not too, because maybe I'll call your supervisor and tell her you threatened me," Peters fired back.
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Brick Wall

Best of the Web: Watch Out, Whistleblowers: Congress and Courts Move to Curtail Leaks


Pro Publica
Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00 UTC
House Republicans introduced legislation yesterday targeting the already-delayed whistleblower rule in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The proposed change would require corporate whistleblowers to report problems internally before going to financial regulators. The move, backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is just the latest in a series of setbacks for those who favor strengthening whistleblower rules to encourage reporting of wrongdoing within government and businesses.

Whistleblowers were dealt another blow last week when a federal court of appeals ruled that corporate whistleblower protections don't cover leaks to the media. According to the Los Angeles Times, the panel of judges ruled that individuals blowing the whistle on publicly traded companies are protected from retaliation only when they report the wrongdoing to financial regulators - which could discourage future leaks to the media.

Whistleblower groups are also protesting a provision in the Intelligence Authorization Bill that would allow intelligence officials to penalize employees and former employees for disclosure of classified information without needing a conviction to do so. The Government Accountability Project has said that under the proposed law, intelligence officials need only reach a "determination" that a knowing violation occurred.
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Vader

Best of the Web: Stunning court decision in Indiana: No right to resist illegal police entry into home

Dan Carden
nwitimes.com
Fri, 13 May 2011 21:37 UTC
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Indianapolis - Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.

"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."
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Gear

Best of the Web: Agriculture: The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race

Jared Diamond, Prof. UCLA School of Medicine
Discover-May 1987, pp. 64-66
Thu, 12 May 2011 00:23 UTC
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© Unknown
To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our Earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We're better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?
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Beaker

Best of the Web: Say What? A Chemical Can Damage Your Lungs, Liver and Kidneys and Still Be Labeled "Non-Toxic"?

Monona Rossol
Alternet
Mon, 09 May 2011 22:49 UTC
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© Jessica Carew KraftOn shelves, in studios, and at schools, art supplies containing toxic ingredients pose risks to human health and the environment.
You will be shocked at all the loop-holes given by the government to industrial chemicals to avoid safety regulation and accurate labeling.

Bisphenol A, parabens, phthalates, formaldehyde, and on and on. Do they expect us all to be chemists? I'm a chemist and even I don't want make every trip to the store a research project. Why not just provide a simple label like "nontoxic" that we can look for? Surely it is illegal to put a nontoxic label on products containing known toxic or carcinogenic substances - especially on children's products. Not so. And we all should know how we got into this mess.

Until the 1980s, even asbestos was a common ingredient in many products including children's art materials. For example, one product was a powdered papier-mâché product for children marketed by Milton Bradley. It contained about 50 percent asbestos powder. Called FibroClay, the asbestos-containing product had a nontoxic approved product (AP) seal on it from the organization known today as the Arts and Creative Materials Institute (ACMI).

Although the hazards of asbestos were known in the 1970s and the 1980s, the only required toxicity tests for consumer products at the time were acute animal tests. These tests involve a brief exposure to the test substance and observation of the animals two weeks later. Because asbestos didn't immediately poison the test animals, no law was broken by labeling this product "nontoxic."
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Question

Best of the Web: Virginia, US: 'Unnerving' rumble felt across Hampton Roads remains a mystery

Kristin Davis
The Virginian-Pilot
Thu, 12 May 2011 11:30 UTC
We may only ever know it as The Night the Earth Rattled.

The seconds-long reverberation at approximately 7:20 p.m. Tuesday sent neighbors to porches, piqued slumbering pets and launched a thousand theories. But nobody can say for sure what it was - not police or seismologists or meteorologists or NASA or Oceana Naval Air Station or the Virginia National Guard.

"No clue," said Scott Mohr, a spokesman for Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.

People reported feeling it from Suffolk to Newport News to the Eastern Shore and beyond. The intensity of the grumble was perhaps greatest in Virginia Beach, where five calls came in to 911 and firefighters set out in search of the source of an explosion.

None was found, said Lori Stiles, communications operations manager for the city. She felt it, too, from her home in Dam Neck, a sensation like that of an approaching storm that caused the house to creak.


View Loud Boom on 05/10/11 in a larger map
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Control Panel

Best of the Web: Volcano heats high-mountain lake to 108 degrees - Now imagine what a few thousand underwater volcanoes could do

Robert W. Felix
The Moral Liberal
Mon, 09 May 2011 10:21 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Last month, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) announced that the water temperature in the main crater of Taal volcano in the Philippines had risen from 86.9 degrees Fahrenheit to 88.7 degrees Fahrenheit (30.5C to 31.5C), a sign that the volcano might soon erupt.

This provides an example of how much heat a volcano can generate.

And this is not the only lake that's running hot.

On March 1st of this year, the water temperature in New Zealand's Mt Ruapehu crater lake reached an astounding 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit (41C).

This was just short of the highest temperature ever reached since the lake was re-established in 2002, say volcanologists from New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS).

"The highest recorded temperature was 42.5degC (108.5F) in May 2003," says GeoNet duty volcanologist Agnes Mazot.

"The temperature of Crater Lake is a measure of amount of volcanic heat coming from Ruapehu," Mazot added.
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