Author Archive | majestic

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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Solar Powered Plane to Fly Around The World

By on April 29, 2013 in News 0

People powered might just as well be the description of this nifty solar plane, as the 12,000 solar cells are all sponsored to the tune of $200 each.

640px-Flea_Hop_HB-SIA_-_Solar_Impulse

Finn Olaf-Jones reports for the Wall Street Journal:

…In 2003, [Bertand] Piccard approached European companies to sponsor what has become a $148 million project and began assembling a team of 80 engineers and technicians plucked largely from Swiss universities. After seven years of tinkering, they arrived at a machine with a deceptively simple design: Solar Impulse—with its sleek, clean lines, white-gloss finish and rakishly angled 208-foot wings (bent to increase the plane’s stability)—resembles what you might get had Steve Jobs reimagined a child’s balsa-wood glider in giant form.

“The crux to flying nonstop around the world with solar energy is being able to fly even when the sun isn’t out, especially at night,” notes André Borschberg, a former Swiss air force fighter ace and McKinsey & Company consultant who, as the project’s CEO, oversees the design team and takes turns piloting the plane.

… Read the rest

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The World’s Top Thinkers

By on April 26, 2013 in News 0

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai in July 2011-croppedMost of you probably know who Richard Dawkins is, but Ashraf Ghani and Ali Allawi? Prospect Magazine reports on its 2013 top thinkers poll:

After more than 10,000 votes from over 100 countries, the results of Prospect’s world thinkers 2013 poll are in. Online polls often throw up curious results, but this top 10 offers a snapshot of the intellectual trends that dominate our age.

THE WINNERS

1. Richard Dawkins
When Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist, coined the term “meme” in The Selfish Gene 37 years ago, he can’t have anticipated its current popularity as a word to describe internet fads. But this is only one of the ways in which he thrives as an intellectual in the internet age. He is also prolific on Twitter, with more than half a million followers—and his success in this poll attests to his popularity online. He uses this platform to attack his old foe, religion, and to promote science and rationalism.

… Read the rest

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Best Way To Reduce Infection Risk In Hospitals? Open The Windows!

By on April 26, 2013 in News 0

University College Hospital, 235 Euston Road, NW1 - geograph.org.uk - 671049How often do you see open windows in hospitals? Hardly ever, right? As reported by BBC News, opening those grimy windows could decrease risk of infection fourfold:

Keeping the windows open on traditional NHS wards can dramatically reduce the risk of infection, say researchers.

The University of Leeds study suggests closing windows, for example to cut heating bills, increases the risk of infection fourfold.

The researchers used experiments and computer modelling to map the passage of air and germs through wards.

They say fitting household extractor fans to windows could maintain sufficient air flow in winter.

The study looked at air flow in traditional “Nightingale wards”, built as open wards of around 30 beds with opening windows and named after Florence Nightingale, who set out the principles of ward design in the 19th Century.

Balloons filled with carbon dioxide – to represent an airborne pathogen – were popped and the gas followed throughout the ward using tracer devices.

… Read the rest

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The Illuminati Were Amateurs: The Second Huge Financial Scandal of the Year Reveals the Real International Conspiracy

By on April 26, 2013 in News 0

Occupy Wall Street March 2012 foreclosure bannerThe biggest price fixing scandal ever is how Matt Taibbi describes it for Rolling Stone:

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that’s trillion, with a “t”) worth of financial instruments.

… Read the rest

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The Exorcist Who Radicalized Tamerlan Tsarnaev

By on April 25, 2013 in News 0

Jinn_from_Ali_manuscriptThis story from New York Magazine’s Intelligencer is giving exorcists a bad name, just when the Catholic Church is opening the curtain on their exorcism rites…

While Dzhokhar Tsarnaev claims that his older brother Tamerlan was the inspiration for the attack on the Bosotn Marathon, who was the inspiration for Tamerlan? According to reports by the AP and Daily Mail, family members point the finger at a man identified only as Misha, a friend whom Tamerlan knew through a local mosque. Misha is described as a bald, red-bearded, 30-year-old Armenian convert to Islam who “claimed to be an exorcist who is fighting with demons.” Tamerlan’s uncle, the famously pissed off Ruslan Tsarni, as well as…

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The Mars Rover Penis

By on April 25, 2013 in News 0

The latest sensation from Mars? A penis drawing by NASA’s Mars Rover…

mars rover penis

Silly, yes, but a certain population of the Interwebs is loving it, so much so that a surge in traffic crashed NASA’s site where the image is hosted.… Read the rest

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This Is Punk?

By on April 23, 2013 in News 0

Punk Girl with Lollipop Strawberry Fields ForeverWith punk as the theme of this year’s Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute benefit, Nitsuh Abebe asks “If a movement known for rage, rebellion, and adolescent id becomes the focus of a high-fashion celebration, is it the final studded nail in the coffin or proof of everlasting life?” for New York Magazine:

Punk rock has always had an easy time living up to E. M. Forster’s view of music as a kingdom that “will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit—the “Oscars of fashion,” currently co-hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and perhaps the city’s most glamorous large social event—feels like the opposite: a celebration of rare finery and a discerning elite. The gala’s theme is generally the same as that of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibit; say, Jacqueline Kennedy or Chanel. But this year’s exhibit is “Punk: Chaos to ­Couture,” a look at punk clothing and high fashion’s varied responses to it.

… Read the rest

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Sex Manual for Ultra-Orthodox Jews

By on April 22, 2013 in News 0

Jewish Marriage“If you have never seen a movie or read a book, how are you supposed to know what you do?” asks David Ribner, an Orthodox sex therapist explaining the need for his new sex manual to BBC News:

Sex is a touchy subject – not least among Israel’s highly conservative ultra-Orthodox Jews. But a therapist in Jerusalem has written a sex guide aimed specifically at this community.

There used to be a sex shop on the way to Dr David Ribner’s office in central Jerusalem.

The sign is still there – with big red letters spelling out “Sex Shop, Sex, Love” – but you can barely read it because it’s been scratched out.

The shop went out of business. Now there’s just one sex shop left in Jerusalem. No surprise for a city brimming with the pious.

Things are quite different in Ribner’s discreet office. Here, there is a row of boxes packed with lubricants, vibrators and massage oils, and an unusual collection of books on the wall – The Joy of Sex and The Guide to Getting It On sit side by side with volumes of Jewish religious texts.

… Read the rest

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