|
The News -
Politics / Corruption
|
|
April 16, 2013 |
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” - Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief Of Staff to Barack Obama
While many people might immediately dismiss the concept, any student of true and unadulterated history has to eventually admit this fact: Governments exploit crisis. Sometimes, they merely take advantage of the ensuing chaos and aftermath of a disaster they had nothing to do with directly. Other times, they create those disasters themselves in order to engineer social and political opportunity. [SHTFPLAN] - [ALTMARKET] |
|
|
The News -
Natural Disasters
|
|
April 16, 2013 |
A powerful earthquake has hit the border regions between Iran and Pakistan, with reports of casualties currently confused. Communications to the region near the epicentre, in a remote corner of the south-east of Iran, appear to be cut off.
Tremors were felt across the Gulf region, across Pakistan and well into north-west India on Tuesday, when the quake happened at 10.44am GMT. The US Geological Survey said it had measured the earthquake at magnitude 7.8 and gave its location at 50 miles east-south-east of the town of Khash, in Iran. It is the biggest earthquake in Iran for 40 years. |
|
|
The News -
Current Events
|
|
April 16, 2013 |
The new bird flu virus evolved from three other influenza viruses, researchers say. Genes from the three viruses combined in a new way to form the new H7N9 virus, which has so far sickened 60 people in China, 13 of whom have died, according to the latest update from the World Health Organization. There is no evidence that the virus can spread from person to person, but authorities are continuing to monitor people who have been in close contact with those who have become sick.
The details of how the three viruses came together to give rise to the new strain, which has never been seen before in humans, were published by Chinese researchers in a report Thursday (April 11) in the New England Journal of Medicine. Experts say flu viruses are known to evolve at a particularly fast pace. [LS] |
| |
|
|
The News -
Current Events
|
|
April 15, 2013 |
Two huge explosions rocked the Boston Marathon finish line at Copley Square just before 3 p.m. today, apparently causing numerous casualties, some possible with traumatic injuries on streets crowded with runners, spectators and post-race partiers, while a top city official said police were finding “more devices.”
City Council President Steve Murphy, who was at the finish line when the two explosions happened, said, “Police sources say they are finding more devices.”
Herald reporter Chris Cassidy, who was running in the marathon, said, “I saw two explosions. The first one was beyond the finish line. I heard a loud bang and I saw smoke rising. I kept running and I heard behind me a loud bang. It looked like it was in a trash can or something. That one was in front of Abe and Louie’s. There are people who have been hit with debris, people with bloody foreheads.” |
|
|
The News -
Weird-Strange
|
|
April 14, 2013 |
|
We humans are all too aware of the scary shit nature likes to pull on us. Whether it's destroying our towns with surging flood waters or setting our drug labs on fire with a well-placed lightning strike, we're constantly reminded that this is Mother Nature's world, and we're only squatting on it until she eventually comes home from vacation with a lingering tequila buzz and a shotgun. But perhaps that's unfair to nature: She's not all petty violence and viciousness ... sometimes she goes for more of a psychological approach to warfare. Here are a few natural phenomena that prove nature is probably just fucking with our heads ... {CRACKED} |
|
|
The News -
Disaster Preparedness
|
|
April 14, 2013 |
When society is affected by a natural disaster, the community comes together, others reach out assistance, and everyone works together to regain stability in life. No one can protect himself or herself from a disaster, it is completely imminent and typically it is a “luck of the draw” type situation.
As we look throughout history, it is true that many new business models arose after a hardship or time of need. Mother Nature would affect society and we would be forced to restructure our lives. We would have to start over from the ground up. This proved to be beneficial because it allowed new types of creative ideas to blossom, and it allowed cities or companies to gain a better name, because many were sub-par.
When it comes to a natural disaster, areas can be devastated for miles on end. When this happens, smart business owners will swoop in to “save the day” and the top priority in a community is now disaster restoration. Disaster restoration plans will then include a plethora of services and options for the landscape, structures, and the society as a whole. {APN} |
|
|
The News -
Current Events
|
|
April 14, 2013 |
A genetic analysis of the avian flu virus responsible for at least nine human deaths in China portrays a virus evolving to adapt to human cells, raising concern about its potential to spark a new global flu pandemic.
The collaborative study, conducted by a group led by Masato Tashiro of the Influenza Virus Research Center, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, appears in the current edition (April 11, 2013) of the journal Eurosurveillance. The group examined the genetic sequences of H7N9 isolates from four of the pathogen's human victims as well as samples derived from birds and the environs of a Shanghai market. |
|
|
The News -
Natural Disasters
|
|
April 14, 2013 |
Ants know when an earthquake is about to strike, researchers have discovered. Their behavior changes significantly prior to the earthquake -- and they resume normal functioning only a day after it.
Gabriele Berberich of the University Duisburg-Essen in Germany presented these findings on Thursday at the European Geosciences Union annual meeting in Vienna according to LiveScience. Berberich and her colleagues discovered that red wood ants preferred to build their colonies right along active faults in Germany. They counted 15,000 ant mounds lining the faults. These faults are fractures where the Earth violently ruptures in earthquakes. |
|
|
The News -
Science-Astronomy
|
|
April 14, 2013 |
- Obama wants Nasa to begin search for a suitable asteroid
- Animation looks simple enough - capture it like a fish in a net
- Nasa working on heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule for the mission
- The programme is expected to cost less than the estimated £1.7 million
The idea of capturing an asteroid may seem unbelievable to most. Yet following U.S President Barack Obama's instructions to Nasa that he wants to snare an asteroid and then launch it into the moon/earth orbit, the space agency has released a video of how it could be done. This is all part of the development of a potential manned mission to Mars.
|
|
|
The News -
War-Draft
|
|
April 12, 2013 |
In a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the communist country lashed out at Tokyo's standing orders to destroy any missile heading toward Japan, threatening such actions will result in a nuclear attack against the island nation.
If Japan executes its threat to shoot down any North Korean missile, such a “provocative” intervention would see Tokyo — an enormous conurbation of 30 million people — “consumed in nuclear flames”, KCNA warned. -- “Japan is always in the cross-hairs of our revolutionary army and if Japan makes a slightest move, the spark of war will touch Japan first,” the report added. |
|
|
The News -
Current Events
|
|
April 11, 2013 |
In 1953, with the United States and the Soviet Union testing hydrogen bombs and the cold war increasingly frigid, that ominous minute hand of hers stood just two ticks from the symbolically catastrophic 12. By 1991, after the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, it retreated to a relatively reassuring 11:43 p.m.
But the Doomsday Clock, which Mrs. Langsdorf drew for the June 1947 cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as a way to evoke the potential devastation of nuclear weapons, did not stay in reverse. Before Mrs. Langsdorf died on March 26, at 96, the board of the Bulletin, which adjusts the minute hand according to its annual assessments of threats to humanity, had set the clock to 11:55 p.m. |
|
|
The News -
Current Events
|
|
April 11, 2013 |
A Pentagon-funded team of scientists have constructed a machine that functions like a human brain and would enable robots to think independently and act autonomously.
Researchers for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have created a device that “looks and ‘thinks’ like a human brain,” James K. Gimzewski, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, told National Defense Magazine. The program is called “physical intelligence” and is capable, “without being programmed like a traditional robot, of performing actions similar to humans,” making it the first incarnation of a robot that can perform “truly autonomously” without human input. |
|
|
The News -
War-Draft
|
|
April 11, 2013 |
|
North Korea has been threatening its neighbor to the south as well as its U.S. ally with invasion and destruction for more than 60 years. Backed by China, the North made good on the first part of this promise in June 1950, sparking the Korean War. But for the most part the decades of hostile rhetoric since the 1953 armistice that ended the fighting have amounted to little more than minor skirmishes. It’s easy to dismiss North Korea’s latest round of pronunciations and posturing as more of the same, except for one important variation in the Kim Jung-un regime’s verbiage. This time around the threat is “thermonuclear” war, and it comes about two months after North Korea’s third nuclear test prompted the U.N. Security Council to pursue additional sanctions against the North. [SCIAM] |
|
|
The News -
Disaster Preparedness
|
|
April 11, 2013 |
|
These mistakes are not universal but I think are widespread and should be addressed. [TSLRF] |
|
|
The News -
Science-Astronomy
|
|
April 10, 2013 |
Stephen Hawking, who spent his career decoding the universe and even experienced weightlessness, is urging the continuation of space exploration — for humanity’s sake.
The 71-year-old Hawking said he did not think humans would survive another 1,000 years “without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”
The British cosmologist made the remarks Tuesday before an audience of doctors, nurses and employees at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he toured a stem cell laboratory that’s focused on trying to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease. |
|
|
The News -
Current Events
|
|
April 10, 2013 |
Two more patients infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu died on Tuesday, bringing the total to nine, Chinese state media has reported. The two patients were from China's eastern Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, state media said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that there is no evidence that the H7N9 virus is being transmitted between people - most cases come from poultry. A total of 28 people in China have been infected by the new bird flu virus. |
|
|
The News -
Weird-Strange
|
|
April 10, 2013 |
A lightning bolt is one of nature’s most over-the-top phenomena, rarely failing to elicit at least a ping of awe no matter how many times a person has witnessed one. With his iconic kite-and-key experiments in the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin showed that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, and since then the general view has been that lightning bolts are big honking sparks no different in kind from the little ones generated by walking in socks across a carpeted room.
But scientists recently discovered something mind-bending about lightning: Sometimes its flashes are invisible, just sudden pulses of unexpectedly powerful radiation. It’s what Joseph Dwyer, a lightning researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology, has termed dark lightning. |
|
|
