David DeGraw, at the Amped Status blog asks: Are we nearing a tipping point as rapacious elites push a heavily armed populace too far?
Never before has the United States had so many citizens with so little means, little to no income and heavy debt. Debt and costs of living have now shackled U.S. citizens just as they have shackled people throughout the world. The economic hit men have now hit the United States as well and millions of American citizens are now effectively sentenced to a slow death.
This hilarious video is made by Debbie Glasband who recently volunteered in eastern India for 6 months, working with the tribal people you see in this video. They are indigenous to Koraput, the second poorest district in India. Due to their poverty, illiteracy and status as the bottom of the caste system, they are often taken advantage of by landowners and local officials who deny them their rights, steal what little money they do have and treat them with disdain.
The video stars people from Puki and Nua Kerenga villages, two of many villages that were displaced by hydroelectric dams and mining projects. Forced onto land that is difficult to cultivate, they have resorted to migrant work and borrowing money from landlords in order to survive.
For tribal people who are landless, raising goats is a great alternative source of income. Families who breed goats can earn a good profit selling the kids in the local market. The extra income provides a safety net for families that can be used for things like medicine, food during lean periods and farm equipment.
Clip from a BBC Four documentary on the US government’s bizarre Project Orion, a plan to send spaceships around our solar system with nuclear power. The extent to which the space program was actually a high-level fusion of hard tech and just batshit crazy science fiction plans has always fascinated me. These guys were looking to science fiction writers as their creative team, basically. The romance of just making insane ideas real, and it actually working (well, at least to some extent)... why isn’t it like this anymore?
The extraordinary yet true account of a secret US government-backed attempt to build a spaceship the size of an ocean liner and send it to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, propelled by thousands of miniature nuclear bombs.
Beginning in 1958 Project Orion ran until 1965, employing some of the best scientists in the world, including the brilliant British mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson. “Freeman Dyson is one of the few authentic geniuses I’ve ever met”, says Arthur C. Clarke. “Orion isn’t crazy. It would work. The question isn’t whether we could do it, but whether we should do it”.
The film uncovers a contemporary angle to Project Orion. Arthur C. Clarke states that today’s generation are once again serious about going to Mars and that NASA has once more become interested in similar nuclear technology as used by Project Orion in the early 60s.
The latest advance in the great Man-Internets Fusion project: Intel is developing brain implants that will psychically interface human beings with their technology. I suppose it was only a matter of time… You have gone too far, science! Although… will I be able to use this implant to turn off other people’s cell phones and Blackberries at a distance?
By the year 2020, you won’t need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.
Scientists at Intel’s research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people’s brains.
The scientists say the plan is not a scene from a sci-fi movie—Big Brother won’t be planting chips in your brain against your will. Researchers expect that consumers will want the freedom they will gain by using the implant.
Torturing, lying, murdering cockroaches slink away into the darkness, their crimes unpunished, as we bicker over whether or not we deserve to be healthy. What in the hell went wrong?
Most Americans are blissfully in the dark about it, but across the Atlantic in the UK, a commission reluctantly established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown under pressure from anti-war activists in Britain is beginning hearings into the actions and statements of British leaders that led to the country?
The CIA has released its official secrets of magic (stage magic, that is, don’t get any ideas) in a just-published book. Now THAT sounds like an excellent holiday present for quite a few people I know. From Wired:
At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid $3,000 to renowned magician John Mulholland to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document ?
As readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of Matt Taibbi. No one, save for Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, comes close to his ability to hone in on the very essence of a political issue and then lacerate the guilty parties with the flick knife of his prose. What an amazing writer. It’s all A game with Taibbi, but he’s especially on point when he writes about Sarah Palin. Sample some of the goods from his most recent column at True/Slant:
Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming?
