Video: Self-Guided Bullet Spots, Steers and Nails Its Target
The breakthrough comes courtesy of engineers at the government’s Sandia National Laboratories. They’ve successfully tested a prototype of the bullet at distances up to 2, 000 meters — more than a mile. The photo above is an actual image taken during one of those tests. A light-emitting diode was attached to the bullet, showing the amazing pathway that the munition made through the night sky.
Night in the cells accidentally became two years in solitary
Land of the free...
During the ordeal, he claims to have been denied access to basic washing facilities for months at a time. He'd lost a third of his body weight, grown a beard down to his chest and was suffering from bed sores. Prison officials had also ignored his pleas to see a dentist, forcing him to pull out his own tooth. They declined other requests for attention, including an audience with a mental health professional. He duly became delirious and says that by the time of his release he'd "been driven mad".
APOD: 2012 January 30 - Blue Marble Earth
Amazing image. Be sure to click on the image and see the enlarged version.
Leon Panetta’s explicitly authoritarian decree
ABC News‘ Jake Tapper pressed White House spokesman Jay Carney back in October about the evidence the administration possesses showing Awlaki’s guilt, and the same authoritarian decree issued: we have said he’s a Terrorist and that is all that is necessary.
Kucinich: Corporations can legally buy elections
“One of the biggest stumbling blocks to America’s economic recovery is corporations can legally buy elections and then influence policies which move millions of jobs out of America, which escape taxation by off shoring profits, which cash in on wars, which press military industrial spending through the roof,” he said on the House floor.
“While we pledge allegiance to the Red, White, and Blue, corporations, whose only allegiance is to green, are selling out America and they are becoming ever more powerful because of a Supreme Court decision in Citizens United which effectively turns this government into an auction where policies may go to the highest bidder.”
Opportunity Rover Spots Greeley Haven on Mars
Very cool.
Where on Mars should you spend the winter? As winter approached in the southern hemisphere of Mars last November, the Opportunity rover had just this problem -- it needed a place to go. The reduced amount of sunlight impacting Opportunity's solar panels combined with the extra power needed to keep equipment warm could drain Opportunity's batteries. Therefore Opportunity was instructed to climb onto the 15 degree incline of Greeley's Haven, shown as the rocky slope ahead. The incline increased power input as Opportunity's solar panels now have greater exposure to sunlight, while also giving the rolling robot some interesting landscape to explore. Visible in the distance, beyond Greeley Haven, lies expansive Endeavour Crater, the ancient impact basin that Opportunity will continue exploring as the Martian winter concludes in a few months, if it survives.
Pulitzer-winner’s 96-second NDAA cartoon
2010 Pulitzer-winner Mark Fiore‘s 96-second animated cartoon shows the removal of Constitutional Civil Rights. When “rights” are no longer absolute, they are no longer rights. This changes the definition of the US from defending unalienable rights and limited government under a constitution, to having control over what liberties people receive and unlimited government and no restraining law, at least in these areas of the Bill of Rights.
The chips that are good for your health
An American biomedical company has signed up with a British healthcare firm to sell digestible sensors, each smaller than a grain of sand, that can trigger the transmission of medical information from a patient's body to the mobile phone of a relative or carer.
The aim is to develop a suite of "intelligent medicines" that can help patients and their carers keep track of which pills are taken at what time of day, in order to ensure that complex regimes of drugs are given the best possible chance of working effectively.
It’s a girl: The three deadliest words in the world
It’s a girl, a film being released this year, documents the practice of killing unwanted baby girls in South Asia. The trailer’s most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters.
The statistics are sickening. The UN reports approximately 200 million girls in the world today are ‘missing’. India and China are said to eliminate more female infants than the number of girls born in the US each year. Lianyungang in China has the worst infant gender ratio on record with 163 boys born for every 100 girls. Taiwan, South Korea and Pakistan are also countries in which unwanted female babies are aborted, killed or abandoned.
Dr. King family’s civil trial verdict: US government assassinated Martin - Washington's Blog
“I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom participants, only Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I attended from beginning to end this historic three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even knows what went on in it. After critical testimony was given in the trial’s second week before an almost empty gallery, Barbara Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was there several days, turned to me and said, “Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson’s trial was the trial of the century. Clinton’s trial was the trial of the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who’s here?” ”
Why 308,127,404 Americans Are Going To Get Hosed | ZeroHedge
A Suspicious Activity Report, or SAR, includes details of any transaction that may be deemed ‘suspicious’. Naturally, there’s no clear guidance on what is/is not considered suspicious. Banks, brokerages, money service businesses, precious metals dealers… even casinos are required by law to fill them out.
If you withdraw an unusual amount of cash from your bank account, that could be deemed suspicious. If you set up a new payee in your billpay service, that could be deemed suspicious. Anything and everything is fair game.
Banks and other businesses who do not fill out SARs face hefty penalties, including imprisonment. If they disclose to a customer that s/he is the subject of a SAR, they have hefty penalties, including imprisonment.
When push comes to shove and they have to choose between a nasty penalty, or submitting a SAR about your unusual cash withdrawal, which option do you think they’ll pick?
Grand Central Terminal Arrests - YouTube
what is wrong with this country?
Two protesters mic check about the loss of freedom brought about by the passage of the NDAA and both are promptly arrested and whisked out of public sight
Hyperinflation Comes To Iran | ZeroHedge
An EA source reports that a relative in Tehran ordered a washing machine for 400,000 Toman (about $240) this week. When he went to the shop the next day, he was told that --- amidst the currency crisis and rising import costs --- the price was now 800,000 Toman (about $480). Another EA source says that the price of an item of software for a laptop computer has tripled from 50,000 Toman to 150,000 Toman within days.
The US schools with their own police
WTF!!??
2010, the police gave close to 300,000 "Class C misdemeanour" tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.
The Stranglers-Nice N Sleazy
awesome for so many reasons not least of which is the keyboard player Dave Greenfield looking a bit Anton Chirgurh-like!
My Guantánamo Nightmare
unfrickinbelievable!
ON Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as “undeliverable,” and the few that I received were so thoroughly and thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were lost.
Makeup transformation of a woman
very interesting video. watch how makeup and photoshop transforms this woman.
Is Ron Paul 2012's Black Swan? | ZeroHedge
For five years, the writing on the wall has been crystal clear. As 2007 began, the US Foreclosure Market Report for 2006 showed that foreclosures for the year had reached 1.2 million, an increase of 42 percent over the 2005 figure. In early February 2007, in the midst of a growing rash of bankruptcies among small US sub-prime mortgage issuers, New Century Financial announced that it was “recalculating” its “profits for the previous three quarters. New Century was one of the three biggest mortgage brokers in the US. In two days, its stock price dropped 40 percent. Six months later, President Bush was calling the now obvious collapse in the US real estate market a “blip” on the US economy. Two months after that, the stock market peaked. A year after that, in September/October 2008, the global economy froze solid and was only thawed by the biggest explosion of money creation in history. Now, here we are at the start of 2012. Nothing has changed. No positive steps have been made. The symptoms have been disguised under an avalanche of palliatives but the disease continues to eat away at the substance of the system on which it feeds. The major effort of government and “mainstream” analysts everywhere has been to avoid, deflect and actively silence any nascent discussion of the root of the problem.
Number of homeless students surges, putting strain on schools
unreal statistic. 10,000+ kids are homeless!
‘Wild Old Women’ Close San Francisco Bank Of America Branch « CBS San Francisco
power to the people!
Democratic Party priorities
The chances that any of these issues will be debated in an Obama/Romney presidential contest are exactly zero. On all of these issues — Endless War, empire, steadfast devotion to the Israeli government, due-process-free assassinations, multiple-nation drone assaults, escalating confrontation with Iran, the secretive, unchecked Surveillance and National Security States, the sadistic and racist Drug War, the full-scale capture of the political process by bankers and oligarchs — Romney is fully supportive of President Obama’s actions (except to the extent he argues they don’t go far enough: and those critiques will almost certainly be modulated once the primary is over, resulting in ever greater convergence between the two). As National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh put it yesterday: “In truth, Obama and Romney are far closer in mindset and philosophy than anyone is willing to acknowledge just now.”
Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins
nice piece by Taibbi at Rolling Stone
The campaign is still a gigantic ritual and it will still be attended by all the usual pomp and spectacle, but it’s empty. In fact, because it’s really a contest between 1%-approved candidates, it’s worse than empty – it’s obnoxious.
Final Curtain: Obama Signs Indefinite Detention of Citizens Into Law As Final Act of 2011
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the President would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
Civilian Contractors in the Kill Chain
About 168 people are needed to keep a single Predator aloft for 24 hours, according to the Air Force. The larger Global Hawk surveillance drone requires 300 people. In contrast, an F-16 fighter aircraft needs fewer than 100 people per mission.
With a fleet of about 230 Predators, Reapers and Global Hawks, the Air Force flies more than 50 drones around the clock over Afghanistan and other target areas. The Pentagon plans to add 730 medium and large drones in the next decade, requiring thousands more personnel.
The Air Force is rushing to meet the demand. Under a new program, drone pilots get 44 hours of cockpit training before they are sent to a squadron to be certified and allowed to command missions. That compares with a minimum of 200 hours’ training for pilots flying traditional warplanes.
Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops
W..T..F..
Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.
Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies
If you’re someone who is content with the Obama presidency and the numerous actions listed above; if you’re someone who believes that things like Endless War, the Surveillance State, the Drug War, the sprawling secrecy regime, and the vast power of the Fed are merely minor, side issues that don’t merit much concern (sure, like a stopped clock, Paul is right about a couple things); if you’re someone who believes that the primary need for American politics is just to have some more Democrats in power, then lock-step marching behind Barack Obama for the next full year makes sense.
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