Author Archive | majestic

DIY Synthetic Biologists Creating Glowing Trees (via Kickstarter)

By on May 8, 2013 in News 0

This is so sci-fi it’s positively scary! The home brewing school of science has turned to crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to fund the creation of genetically engineered glow-in-the-dark trees, reports Andrew Pollack for the New York Times:

Hoping to give new meaning to the term “natural light,” a small group of biotechnology hobbyists and entrepreneurs has started a project to develop plants that glow, potentially leading the way for trees that can replace electric streetlamps and potted flowers luminous enough to read by.

The project, which will use a sophisticated form of genetic engineering called synthetic biology, is attracting attention not only for its audacious goal, but for how it is being carried out.

glowing plants

Rather than being the work of a corporation or an academic laboratory, it will be done by a small group of hobbyist scientists in one of the growing number of communal laboratories springing up around the nation as biotechnology becomes cheap enough to give rise to a do-it-yourself movement.

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Tsarnaev Brothers had a CIA Connection

By on May 7, 2013 in News 0

tamerlan_tsarnaev--525x415Dave Lindorff is a veteran investigative reporter, a columnist for CounterPunch, and a contributor to Businessweek, The Nation, Extra! and Salon.com. Here he writes for his This Can’t Be Happening! blog:

Let’s do a little exercise. Forget nationalities and identities for a moment.

Imagine you are a police detective investigating a horrific bombing in your city — one in which several people were killed and hundreds were injured. You have a captured suspect whom you are sure was one of the bombers, and another was killed in a shootout, but both are young and not very sophisticated.

They might have acted alone, of course, but knowing how these things work, you are also looking for leads to try to determine who else might have been involved, and especially who might have been behind the incident.

As it happens, your two suspects are immigrants. They were brought to your country at a young age by parents who were refugees seeking asylum from a region of the world riven by civil war, brutal repression by a larger power, and that was a breeding ground for terrorists who had been known to have launched terrible attacks against civilians, including schools and full movie theaters in that larger power.

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Billions of Cicadas About to Overrun U.S. East Coast

By on May 7, 2013 in News 0

I have visions of African locust swarms, but apparently being outnumbered 600 to 1 by cicadas shouldn’t worry residents of the East Coast of America as all these insects are looking for is sex. From AP via Black Mountain News:

Any day now, billions of cicadas with bulging red eyes will crawl out of the earth after 17 years underground and overrun the East Coast. The insects will arrive in such numbers that people from North Carolina to Connecticut will be outnumbered roughly 600-to-1. Maybe more.

Scientists even have a horror-movie name for the infestation: Brood II. But as ominous as that sounds, the insects are harmless. They won’t hurt you or other animals. At worst, they might damage a few saplings or young shrubs. Mostly they will blanket certain pockets of the region, though lots of people won’t ever see them.

“It’s not like these hordes of cicadas suck blood or zombify people,” says May Berenbaum, a University of Illinois entomologist.

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Gunplay Reflects on “The Original Bilderberg Group”

By on May 6, 2013 in News 0

Gunplay-mugshot.jpgHip Hop artist Gunplay, a/k/a Don Logan, has penned a short essay about the Bilderberg Group for Pigeons & Planes:

As I am intrigued by the well-established Bilderberg Group, allow me to expand briefly. The profound group originated at Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands from May 29th-31st in 1954 where they “debated the future of the world.” Its organizational structure consists of the world’s richest, most powerful leaders, including multi-functional corporations such as directors of large businesses, bankers and top politicians. Daniel Estulin described the group in his Internet article as such: “who’s who of world power elites.” No individual can buy their way into the powerful group, but is invited by the Bilderberg Committee and must be adherents to the One World Order governance run by the world’s top elites.

The Bilderberg group meets yearly in various locations of the world where the participants discuss the world’s future.

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Is the US in Terminal Decline?

By on May 5, 2013 in News 0

You might very well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment. BBC News‘ North America editor Mark Mardell has some interesting thoughts, however:

It is eerie to walk so close to a weapon of mass destruction.

The B-52 bomber is one of the ultimate expressions of American power. If the president decides to drop a nuclear bomb, this is the sort of aircraft that would do it.

I am careful not to step over the red line around the plane. A sign painted on the ground warns lethal force can be used against those who cross it without authorisation.

I’ve come to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, filming for the new BBC One programme The Editors.

The programme aims to get the BBC’s on-air editors to explore – and hopefully answer – a big question. My chosen subject is the decline of American power.

There’s little evidence of it at the base, where the sign above the gate reads: “Only the best come North”.

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Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories

By on April 30, 2013 in News 0

Here we go again: another  mainstream media article condemning all conspiracy theories due to some easy to mock dubious ones. This time by Scientific American:

Did NASA fake the moon landing? Is the government hiding Martians in Area 51? Is global warming a hoax? And what about the Boston Marathon bombing…an “inside job” perhaps?

World conspiracies pyramid

In the book “The Empire of Conspiracy,” Timothy Melley explains that conspiracy theories have traditionally been regarded by many social scientists as “the implausible visions of a lunatic fringe,” often inspired by what the late historian Richard Hofstadter described as “the paranoid style of American politics.” Influenced by this view, many scholars have come to think of conspiracy theories as paranoid and delusional, and for a long time psychologists have had little to contribute other than to affirm the psychopathological nature of conspiracy thinking, given that conspiricist delusions are commonly associated with (schizotype) paranoia.

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Obama: I Want To Close Guantanamo

By on April 30, 2013 in News 0

Looks like the Guantanamo hunger strikers have caught the attention of US President Obama. From USA Today:

President Obama said Tuesday that his administration would re-engage Congress on closing the U.S. military-run detention center at Guantanamo Bay, calling the facility a “recruitment tool for extremists” and suggesting it is undermining U.S. security.

“It needs to be closed,” Obama said at a White House news conference marking the first 100 days of his second term. “I’m going to go back at this.”

Obama’s comments come as military officials say that as many 100 prisoners at Guantanamo are engaged in a hunger strike.

With the situation getting more difficult, the Pentagon in recent days dispatched 40 additional Navy medical personnel to Guantanamo to deal with the hunger strikers. They bolstered a staff of about 100, said Lt. Col. Samuel House, a base spokesman…

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