Frontierist News Roundup 20070121

Posted by James Bowery on Sunday, 21 January 2007 21:44.

Some highlights for this week: LA ethnic gang violence spreads to formerly safe suburbs… Immigrant cooks spreading brain parasites to patrons of ethnic restaurants… 14 members of Carter’s advisory board resign over Carter’s book on Israel-Palestinian conflict… The most effective sabotage appears accidental… Passports… House construction by robot… Most women now live without husband… Condo market falling… Another Neanderthal-Modern human hybrid found… Investment bank issues warning on Iran… Methane rocket engine test successful… “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”—Iran’s President… 500 gallons of fresh water per day—from thin air… Blair calls majority of Scots and English “crazy” for wanting devolution… Potential cancer cure—cheap—no patent… Harem forming behavior among women… Charles Murray on preventing the foolishness of the intellectual elite… Integrated function heat pump using 50% less energy than standard heat pumps… Jews incarcerated in Israeli jails rather than being raped by blacks and Hispanics in US jails…

“An anonymous reader writes to mention a Reuters article about some trouble the U.S. is having communicating with a spy satellite. The sensor package was launched last year by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It has apparently hung in a low orbit for months now, and efforts to communicate with it have been unsuccessful.”

“What if humans cast aside processed foods and saturated fats in favour of the sort of diet our ape-like ancestors once ate? Nine volunteers gave it a go… and were glad they did so.”

“Steckel has found that Americans lose the most height to Northern Europeans in infancy and adolescence, which implicates pre- and post-natal care and teen-age eating habits. “If these snack foods are crowding out fruits and vegetables, then we may not be getting the micronutrients we need,” he says. In a recent British study, one group of schoolchildren was given hamburgers, French fries, and other familiar lunch foods; the other was fed nineteen-forties-style wartime rations such as boiled cabbage and corned beef. Within eight weeks, the children on the rations were both taller and slimmer than the ones on a regular diet.”

‘“This epidemic [of gang violence in Los Angeles] is largely immune to general declines in crime,” the report found. “And it is spreading to formerly safe middle class neighborhoods. Law enforcement officials now warn that they are arriving at the end of their ability to contain it to poor minority and immigrant hot zones.”’

“Rare brain worms spread by unsanitary cooks”

“Dr. Aaron Mohanty found a cyst of tapeworm larvae living in [El Salvadoran immigrant Renaldo] Ramirez’s brain. If it hadn’t been found, the doctor said, Ramirez could have been dead within hours from the disease called cysticercosis. The disease is usually found in rural parts of developing countries with poor hygiene habits. However, Ramirez was the fourth patient Mohanty [a Houston, Texas-based neurosurgeon] treated within a few months.”

“A new grouping of European Parliament members who share avowedly racist and anti-Semitic views is “a disturbing show of unity among bigots,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) declared over the weekend.”

“The “Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty” group, led by Bruno Gollnisch of France’s National Front, is currently on trial for questioning the existence of the gas chambers during the Holocaust.”

“Ex-armory turns into porn site”

“Kink, a Web-based pornography distributor, buys historic S.F. building to film its bondage movies”

A microcosm of trends in the US.

“Fourteen members of an advisory board to the Carter Center in Atlanta resigned Thursday in protest over former President Jimmy Carter’s best-selling new book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“Libya wants to order between 13 and 18 Rafale fighter jets from France in a deal worth as much as $3.24 billion, a French newspaper reported on Sunday.”

“Rafale, designed and built by Dassault Aviation in conjunction with many French companies, is a twin-jet omnirole fighter with reduced radar signature.”

“Marcel Dassault, born Marcel Bloch, [...] was a French aircraft industrialist.”

[...]

“As a Jew, he was deported to Buchenwald during World War II, refusing collaboration with the German aviation industry.”

“One of the most effective forms of industrial or military sabotage limits itself to damage that can never be thoroughly proven - or even proven at all - to be anything deliberate. It is like an invisible political movement; perhaps it isn’t there at all. If a bomb is wired to a car’s ignition, then obviously there is an enemy; if public building or a political headquarters is blown up, then there is a political enemy. But if an accident, or a series of accidents, occurs, if equipment merely fails to function, if it appears faulty, especially in a slow fashion, over a period of natural time, with numerous small failures and misfirings- then the victim, whether a person or a party or a country, can never marshal itself to defend itself.”

—Philip K. Dick, “A Scanner Darkly”

“Massive Resource List for All Autodidacts”

Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts suggested the Duke case would’ve blown up even worse if the racial tables were turned.

“Imagine if the woman were white and reported being raped by three black members of the basketball team. You’d have to call out the National Guard.”

Really?

“That hyperbole isn’t born out by the facts,” said Richmond-area attorney Jeff Everhart.

He’s representing one of the four Virginia Union University students indicted last week for allegedly raping a University of Richmond coed on Jan. 21.

All four of the accused are black, two who had ties to the football team. One was a star quarterback as a freshman. All four were considered good kids, attending a historic black university.

The victim is white, an out-of-state student attending the posh University of Richmond, which has Duke-size tuition.

“Record numbers of U.S. and Canadian citizens applied for passports in recent weeks in advance of a January 23 deadline requiring all air travelers to present passports when flying between the United States and Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.”

“The U.S. State Department issued 320,000 passports the first week of January—an all-time high—and has been able to keep up with demand.”

From 22 August 2006:
“State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus said existing passports will remain valid until they expire but, eventually, all U.S. passports—about 13 million will be issued in 2006—will contain [RFID] chips.”

“How To: Disable Your Passport’s RFID Chip”

“Engineers are racing to unveil the world’s first robot capable of building a house at the touch of a button.”

“The first prototype - a watertight shell of a two-storey house built in 24 hours without a single builder on site - will be erected in California before April.”

[...]

“By building almost an entire house from just two materials - concrete and gypsum - the robots will eliminate the need for dozens of traditional components, including floorboards, wooden window frames and possibly even wallpaper. It may eventually be possible to use specially treated gypsum instead of glass window panes.”

“Moshe Aryeh Friedman, a member of the Natorei Karta, who attended the Holocaust denial conference in Teheran last month, was asked to leave a hotel in Brooklyn over the weekend, where he was staying with his wife and four children. It was the latest in a string of protests against the anti-Zionist sect.”

“For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.”

“In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.”

“Since the middle of 2006, the frenzied condominium market [in Washington, DC] and in several other big cities like Las Vegas, Miami and Boston has collapsed. Once roaring sales have slowed to a trickle, sparse inventory has mushroomed into a glut and soaring prices have flattened out and started falling.”

“A 40,000-year-old skull found in a Romanian cave shows traits of both modern humans and Neanderthals and might prove the two interbred, researchers reported on Monday.”

“If the findings are confirmed, the skull would represent the oldest modern human remains yet found in Europe.”

“Major investment bank issues warning on strike against Iran”

“Carl Stormer points us to this amazing map of the United States. Each state’s economic output is analogized to another country’s GDP.”

Skype owners start an “interactive television service”

“A penisula long thought to be part of Greenland’s mainland turned out to be an island when a glacier retreated.”

“A twin leans over and kisses the cheek of her sister in a heart-warming picture that would not be out of place in any family home.”

“Yet these siblings are a not even born and the astonishing images have been captured on a new ‘four-dimensional’ ultrasound scan of the womb.”

“Attempting to turn a page in a very mixed history, a prominent African American evangelical pastor and the head of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus launched an annual award on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. The launch was aimed at strengthening the relationship between Israel and the African American community after three decades of frosty relations following the Civil Rights Movement in the US.”

‘XCOR’s Methane/LOX Engine Tests Go “Incredibly Well”’

“My recent comment piece explaining how Iran’s president was badly misquoted when he allegedly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” has caused a welcome little storm. The phrase has been seized on by western and Israeli hawks to re-double suspicions of the Iranian government’s intentions, so it is important to get the truth of what he really said.”

“I took my translation - “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” - from the indefatigable Professor Juan Cole’s website where it has been for several weeks.”

“But it seems to be mainly thanks to the Guardian giving it prominence that the New York Times, which was one of the first papers to misquote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came out on Sunday with a defensive piece attempting to justify its reporter’s original “wiped off the map” translation.”

“A gizmo which sucks the air in, then sucks the water out of the air, and then spews out clean fresh water. 500 Gallons of it - a day. Every off-grid home should have one. Only problem is it’ll set you back a cool $500,000 . FEMA have already bought two, and the US Army is said to be on the verge of buying many”

“An Israeli described by US authorities as one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges of conspiring to import thousands of Ecstasy pills into the United States.”

“The plea by Zeev Rosenstein, also known as “The Fat Man” and purportedly one of Israel’s top organized crime figures, comes just a week before his trial was scheduled to begin. Rosenstein, 52, was sentenced by US District Judge William Dimitrouleas to 12 years in prison to be served in Israel as part of the deal.”

US prisons aren’t good enough for the Chosen? Guess why?

“Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned against any bid to break Britain apart, saying it would be “a crazy” step 300 years after Scotland and England united.”

“Blair’s warning Tuesday came as the Scottish National Party (SNP) used the anniversary of their union to launch a fresh drive for independence, while some opinion polls suggested a majority of Scots and English want to separate.”

Black attorney celebrates MLK Day in a novel way.

“A former Penn State football player was arrested Tuesday in the killing of a student who was stabbed 93 times last spring.”

“Police say 23-year-old Lavon Chisley of Waldorf, Maryland, is to be arraigned on charges of first- and third-degree murder in the death of Langston Carraway.”

Both the victim and the accused are black. The article curiously neglects to mention that the killer used the victim’s blood to write the word “nigger” on a wall at the crime scene.

“The Saudi government has signaled in the past that it would oppose an early withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, fearing it would leave minority Sunni Muslims at the mercy of Shiite Muslim militias.”

“The Saudis’ primary concern is the Sunni population of Anbar province, the senior U.S. official. The official said the Saudis had informed Washington that they were considering a plan to send troops into the province if Bush’s plan failed.”

“It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.”

“It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.”

[...]

“DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a price worth paying if it turns out to be effective against all cancers. The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: [p]harmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.”

“It is a classic image: a group of young women sighing over the latest heartthrob. But do they all really share identical taste for, say, Brad Pitt, or that cute guy in physics class? A new study suggests that, in fact, women will look more favourably on the men that other women find attractive.”

Can technologies such as television alter women’s taste in men along the same lines?

“MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire RateMyProfessors.com. The company says the acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of March 2007. The site, which allows college students to share information on the performance of college professors, has more than 6.6 million ratings on more than 900,000 college professors and is visited by more than 10 million college students, according to MTV Networks.”

“Sumner Murray Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein on May 27, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts) is Chairman of the Board and controlling shareholder of the Viacom and CBS Corporation media conglomerates. He is also the majority owner of Midway Games and of the National Amusements theater chain.”

“The Individualist is a collaborative knowledge building system modeled on the Wiki-Wiki collaborative information exchange platform, popularized by the Wikipedia online encylopedia. Through the work of interested folks (just like yourself) we hope to develop and expand knowledge and awareness of the important role our biochemical and genomic individuality can play in the understanding and evaluation of scientific information.”

Video of multiple car collisions on Portland’s icy streets.

Charles Murray:

“The encouragement of wisdom requires a special kind of education. It requires first of all recognition of one’s own intellectual limits and fallibilities—in a word, humility. This is perhaps the most conspicuously missing part of today’s education of the gifted. Many high-IQ students, especially those who avoid serious science and math, go from kindergarten through an advanced degree without ever having a teacher who is dissatisfied with their best work and without ever taking a course that forces them to say to themselves, “I can’t do this.” Humility requires that the gifted learn what it feels like to hit an intellectual wall, just as all of their less talented peers do, and that can come only from a curriculum and pedagogy designed especially for them. That level of demand cannot fairly be imposed on a classroom that includes children who do not have the ability to respond. The gifted need to have some classes with each other not to be coddled, but because that is the only setting in which their feet can be held to the fire.”

Alberto Gonzales, our Attorney General, is looking out for us.

“Scientists who recreated “Spanish flu” - the 1918 virus which killed up to 50m people - have witnessed its remarkable killing power first hand.”

“The lungs of infected monkeys were destroyed in just days as their immune systems went into overdrive after a Canadian laboratory rebuilt the virus.”

“U.S. homeowners might soon see their electric bills decreasing thanks to an integrated heat pump system developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.”

“Scientists say the unit combines water heating with heating and cooling, dehumidification and ventilation functions, using 50 percent less energy than standard heat pumps and water heaters.”

“An Italian group on Thursday asked Pope Benedict to order the removal of all religious works of art and Catholic traditions that are still tainted by anti-Semitism.”

“The Roman Association of Friends of Israel sent a letter to the Pope asking him for a “clear and strong signal” that he would not tolerate any residual or resurgent forms anti-Semitism in religious art or popular culture, such as processions.”

Barack Obama was raised a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia.

“Reversing itself, the Defense Department says an espionage report it produced that warned about Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters was not true.”

“Just when you finally have grasped the concept of quantum mechanics, it’s time to wake up and to see the arrival of a nascent field named quantum biology. This is the scientific study of biological processes in terms of quantum mechanics and it uses today’s high-performance computers to precisely model these processes. And this is what researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) are doing, using powerful computer models to reveal biological mechanisms. Right now, they’re working on a “nanoswitch” that might be used for a variety of applications, such as targeted drug delivery to sensors.”

“Two of the suspects indicted in connection to the double murder of a young Knoxville couple pleaded not guilty Thursday.”

“Lemaricus Davidson and Eric Boyd entered their pleas during an arraignment in federal court.”

See pictures of the accused here.

“The couple was last seen on a date January 6. Newsom’s shot and burned body was found January 7 along some railroad tracks. The body of Christian, who had been raped, was found in a trash can in Davidson’s rented house two days later, two blocks away.”

See a picture of the victims here.

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