A Vegan No More
November 21st, 2010This might be useful if you are having to go through watching someone kill themselves and/or their children on a vegan diet.
Or not.
Via: Voracious Vegan:
Many of you know that I have recently been struggling for the first time in my life with health problems. When I discovered that my problems were a direct result of my vegan diet I was devastated. 2 months ago, after learning the hard way that not everyone is capable of maintaining their health as a vegan, I made one of the most difficult decisions of my life and gave up veganism and returned to eating an omnivorous diet. My health immediately returned. This experience has been humbling, eye-opening, and profoundly transformative. To hear the whole story just keep reading…
Related:
Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie
The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith
Research Credit: JH
Russia Frees Israeli Mercenary
November 20th, 2010Via: BBC:
Russia has released Israeli mercenary Yair Klein, who was sought by Colombia for his involvement in the training of paramilitary squads, reports say.
Klein, a former Israeli army soldier, is on his way to Israel, Interfax news agency reports.
In 2001, a Colombian court convicted him in absentia of training right-wing guerrilla groups.
Russia arrested him in 2007 under an Interpol warrant and later agreed to extradite him to Colombia.
But the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) forbid the extradition, on grounds that he might face mistreatment in Colombia.
Israel’s Channel 10 television showed Klein on Friday leaving a Moscow jail where he was being held.
“Klein has been freed and he is currently en route to Israel,” Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed security source as saying.
Klein was sentenced in absentia in 2001 to 10 years and eight months in prison in Colombia for assisting and training drug lords and guerrilla groups in the 1980s and 1990s.
He was found guilty of training a cadre of killers for the infamous Medellin drug cartel, a charge which he denies.
They later became the nucleus of the brutal paramilitary army known as the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), which prosecutors said carried out some of the country’s most notorious political assassinations.
He has also served prison time in Sierra Leone in 1999, on charges of smuggling arms to the rebel group Revolutionary United Front.
Colorado: Australian Twins Carry Out Suicide Pact, One Survives; Had Articles About Columbine
November 19th, 2010This reminded me of the strange case of Jane Greenhow, Stefan Bateman and Ruth Fleming from 1996:
Stefan Bateman and Ruth Fleming, both 22, were wearing the same style of black garb when they rented pistols at the range and took a few dozen practice shots Wednesday afternoon.
Then they turned the pistols on themselves–apparently counting down together so the guns would go off at the same instant, Arizona authorities said.
“Witnesses said they both fell at the same time,” said Mesa Police Sgt. Earle Lloyd. “It was ruled a double suicide.”
Another very strange case involving twins: Ursula and Sabina Eriksson.
Via: Daily Telegraph:
AUSTRALIAN twins Kristin and Candace Hermeler were carrying articles about one of America’s worst school massacres when they shot themselves in a bizarre suicide pact.
The revelation has made their transformation from cheerful best friends in a middle-class Melbourne family to an unimaginable death plot at a shooting range more difficult to understand.
As police interviewed the surviving twin, Candace, officers said a search of their bags had found magazine articles, clippings and letters related to the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.
“But there was never anything we came across to indicate that they had intended to do another Columbine,” Arapahoe County Sheriff’s office Captain Louie Perea said.
The pair turned .22 pistols, which they had rented for $20, on themselves at the Family Shooting Range in Denver, Colorado on Monday, leaving Kristin dead.
In terrible scenes, the pair fell backwards simultaneously before Candace, with blood pouring from a bullet wound in her own forehead, stumbled towards her sister’s body.
Known as Candy, the 29-year-old was “devastated, frustrated, distraught and angry at times” during a two-hour interview with police.
She repeatedly declined to say why she and her sister had shot themselves.
…
They returned to a Melbourne private school for their final two years and both completed double university degrees. Together they had travelled to Canada, San Francisco, North Carolina and had worked as nannies.
They had spent five weeks in Denver on cultural exchange visas.
One of the twins had been due to leave on Tuesday.
Their cousin Jacky Sole in Washington said the pair were raised in a comfortable, middle-class family.
“They grew up in a loving home. They didn’t lack for anything,” she said.
Another relative said: “They were close, they knew each other, loved each other.”
Captain Louie Perea confirmed the twins had made a suicide pact.
“The surviving sister has confirmed that they had planned to commit suicide together, and did in fact shoot themselves,” he said.
…
Before the shooting they chatted with other shooters.
U.S. Scientists Significantly More Likely to Publish Fake Research
November 19th, 2010Via: PhysOrg:
US scientists are significantly more likely to publish fake research than scientists from elsewhere, finds a trawl of officially withdrawn (retracted) studies, published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Fraudsters are also more likely to be “repeat offenders,” the study shows.
The study author searched the PubMed database for every scientific research paper that had been withdrawn—and therefore officially expunged from the public record—between 2000 and 2010.
A total of 788 papers had been retracted during this period. Around three quarters of these papers had been withdrawn because of a serious error (545); the rest of the retractions were attributed to fraud (data fabrication or falsification).
The highest number of retracted papers were written by US first authors (260), accounting for a third of the total. One in three of these was attributed to fraud.
Research Credit: eo
Ron Paul: American Traveler Dignity Act
November 19th, 2010Via: Ron Paul:
My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us.
Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.
Research Credit: Eileen
The Shadow Scholar
November 19th, 2010Via: The Chronicle of Higher Education:
I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I’ve worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.
In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company’s staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.
You would be amazed by the incompetence of your students’ writing. I have seen the word “desperate” misspelled every way you can imagine. And these students truly are desperate. They couldn’t write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school. They really need help. They need help learning and, separately, they need help passing their courses. But they aren’t getting it.
For those of you who have ever mentored a student through the writing of a dissertation, served on a thesis-review committee, or guided a graduate student through a formal research process, I have a question: Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research? How does that student get by you?
I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I never struggle to find work. And as my peers trudge through thankless office jobs that seem more intolerable with every passing month of our sustained recession, I am on pace for my best year yet. I will make roughly $66,000 this year. Not a king’s ransom, but higher than what many actual educators are paid.
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
Double Kill Shot Dealt to the Religion of Scientific Materialism
November 18th, 2010This reminded me of the Pioneer anomaly:
The Pioneer anomaly or Pioneer effect is the observed deviation from predicted trajectories and velocities of various unmanned spacecraft visiting the outer solar system, most notably Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
Both Pioneer spacecraft are escaping from the solar system, and are slowing down under the influence of the Sun’s gravity. Upon very close examination, however, they are slowing down slightly more than expected. The effect can be modeled as a slight additional acceleration towards the Sun.
The anomaly has no universally accepted explanation. The explanation may be mundane, such as measurement error, thrust from gas leakage or uneven radiation of heat. However, it is also possible that current physical theory does not correctly explain the behaviour of the craft relative to the sun.
Via: Technofascism Blog:
Since the technocracy needs to reduce everyone to a controllable, predictable material entity, it obviously favors a worldview that considers human beings to be nothing but trousered apes. To be properly denigrated, humans must be reduced to nothing more intrinsically important than a temporary, biological cog in the giant mega-machine’s creeking march toward greater progress and control over nature.
Unfortunately, to the dismay of the apostles of technocratic nihilism, this summer two findings, largely ignored by the mainstram media, were published that dealt devastating blows to the materialist philosophies that justify the technocracy’s agenda: 1) the conclusive evidence that Carbon-14 and other radiometric dating methods are invalid; and 2) strong evidence that the once universal and finely-tuned physical constants now actually vary throughout the universe.
The implications of one of these findings alone is enough to rewrite history and our place in the universe. But taken together, they seem to be almost a beacon from a lighthouse outside of time and space cautioning us not to venture further into the rocky crags of materialist philosophy.
Some readers who think that evidence for varying isotope decay and physical non-constants might not be a big deal would do well to remember that ALL scientific knowledge we have about the origin of the universe and life on earth is based on the assumption that radioactive decay is constant and that the physical laws are not different in different places in the universe. When these assumptions are shattered, we should be very skeptical about the versions of history that are currently being taught in schools as though they were the final truths of reality.
Senators and TSA Defend “Love Pats” at Airports
November 18th, 2010It’s sexual assault. It’s state sponsored sexual assault. See: TSA – Sexual Assault.
Via: CBS News:
“I’m wildly excited that I can walk through a machine instead of getting my dose of love pats,” Sen. McCaskill said.
Viewers Pull Plug on U.S. Cable Television
November 18th, 2010Via: Financial Times:
The number of people subscribing to US cable television services has suffered its biggest decline in 30 years as younger, tech-savvy viewers lead an exodus to web-based operations, such as Hulu and Netflix.
The total number of subscribers to TV services provided by cable, satellite and telco operators fell by 119,000 in the third quarter, compared with a gain of 346,000 in the third quarter of 2009, according to SNL Kagan, a research company.
Scientist Who Studied How Mosquitoes Transmit Diseases Dies After Ingesting Cyanide
November 17th, 2010Via: The Tampa Tribune:
A University of South Florida researcher stumbled out of her hotel room Monday night and told two guests she had ingested cyanide, police said.
Chitra Chauhan, 33, wife and mother of a 3-year-old, was pronounced dead at a hospital about two hours later, victim of an apparent suicide. A small amount of potassium cyanide was found on a table in her room.
The nature of Chauhan’s work and the manner of her death turned what investigators characterized as a private act into a public spectacle.
…
Chauhan worked in the USF Center for Biological Defense and Global Health Infectious Disease Research, which is housed at the USF Research Park on the south end of campus. The center was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to study bioterrorism and emerging infections.
Security is tighter throughout the research park because work is done there with private companies and the Department of Defense.
…
Chauhan was investigating treatments for tropical diseases common around the world, including malaria, USF said.
…
Chauhan has worked at USF as a post-doctoral researcher since Dec. 26, 2007. Her annual salary was $45,183. Police gave her address as a condominium on Palm Springs Boulevard in Tampa Palms.
She obtained a doctorate degree in 2005 from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, India. She went to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana to join her husband, who had taken a faculty position there after finishing graduate school, said Professor Dave Severson, who runs the lab where she worked.
The lab studied how mosquitoes transmit diseases, and Chauhan focused on the transmission of dengue fever.
Related?
Genetically Altered Mosquitoes Released into the Wild
Bill Gates Funds Research Into ‘Flying Syringe’ Mosquitoes to Deliver Vaccines
Reader almaverdad sent:
Miami Sees First Locally Acquired Case of Dengue in 60 Years
