http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2010/12/the_20_worst_so_19.php
F2K10
The 20 Worst Songs of 2010
#1: Train, "Hey, Soul Sister"
Maura Johnston and Christopher R. Weingarten, Wed., Dec. 22 2010
The future of rock music, right here.
Here are some important things to know about Train's "Hey, Soul Sister."
"Hey, Soul Sister" was the only rock song to land in the Billboard Hot 100's top 10 this year. This is pretty much proof that rock music is dead, right? We're not gonna tell Nickelback to come back because all is forgiven, but this warm washcloth of facepalmy puns and cutey-poo pukulele might be why Captain Beefheart died.
It's pretty much the whitest song to ever have the word "soul" in it, and that includes Death Cab's "Soul Meets Body." There is less soul in the entirety of Train than in the palest single member of Collective Soul. "Hey, Soul Sister" is soul for people who refer to peanut butter and jelly as "soul food." It makes the California Raisins look like the second coming of Sly and the Family Stone. It's so white, Sarah Palin just named it her running mate for 2012.
At its outset, it sounds like that All-American Rejects song that was popular last year. Remember that one? Here, we just Googled it for you. Train, you owe us 20 seconds of our lives back, and we owe All-American Rejects a cut of our vast F2K10 riches.
The chorus is jacked from an even worse place. "Hey Soul Sister" is an orgy where bad ideas trade STDs, and the most syphilitic brain-fart stumbled in drunk from a Smash Mouth show. (For those of you who arrived late, Smash Mouth was a band from the late '90s that was formed when a soul patch met cake frosting. Their wikki-wikki scratching and dorkpie hats did to music what blood-soaked clowns do to the dreams of sleeping children.) Listen to "Hey, Soul Sister" a few times and you'll inevitably be reminded of the "whistling solo" from the Shrek house band's inescapable "All Star." From Smash Mouth, Train picked up an earworm that burrowed into society's asshole, laid 4.7 million iTunes eggs, and gave birth to a grey cloud of banality that covers the Earth.
The lyrics represent the weird hippie fantasies of a yuppie toolbag. Quoth front-nozzle Pat Monahan: "I just wrote on my computer for a while what I saw as a group of beautiful women at Burning Man dancing around the fire. I've never been there before, but that's what I imagined it would be like." Yes, this song is the result of a grown bajillionaire who dresses like a 19-year-old Dane Cook stan sitting pud-handed at his MacBook and writing fan fiction about the fun times hippie girls have at Burning Man. Dude is like five feet and 10 inches of midlife crisis.
How much do you want to bet that the initial rhyme to the word "direction" in the second verse was "erection," and not "Love Connection"? Because, really. Erection.
It makes hashtag rap look poetic. The references to the '80s in "Hey, Soul Sister"--the untrimmed-chest bit, the Mr. Mister and Madonna name-drops, Love Connection--they're all lazier than Garfield in a lasagna coma. Oh, fuck-now they've got us doing it!
The ukulele. The fuck?
It lowered the bar for blowjob references on pop radio. "Your lipstick stains / On the front lobe of my left side brains"? Congratulations, Flo Rida: You just became the front-runner for the National Book Award (Fellatio Division). When the inevitable "keep Train's song out of our precious commercials" movement sprung up, it was called Stop Advertising From Pulling a Train, which is a better sex joke in that it a) makes sense and b) wasn't sung over a ukulele.
The ukulele player looks like Howie Mandel. I mean.
It was the lone pop song to manage cultural ubiquity in a year when that was pretty much impossible. Think about the last time you were stuck in a long line while making a toilet paper run, or were forced to spend time on hold with somebody who assured you that your call was very important, or forgot to DVR Project Runway so you had to sit through all the ad breaks. You probably heard Pat Monahan's weiner warble at some point. That's because "Hey, Soul Sister" is made for those moments when you're forced to do nothing else but listen to it, and it's just catchy enough to rattle around in your head during that downtime's aftermath, disrupting any activities you actually enjoy.
It's never going to die. You thought "Hey, Soul Sister"'s ubiquity on the adult-contemporary charts was enough for it to live on in Walgreens' white-noise perpetuity? Well, there's a country version of the track as well, with the fiddles and vocal harmonies and slide guitar turned all the way up. Somehow the lyrical reference to Madonna is intact -- c'mon, guys, "Loretta" scans just as well, and if you think hard enough you can probably squeeze a reference to "Fist City" in there!
And just think: When your shitty kid marries someone you violently disapprove of 20 years from now, this song -- with its references to blowjobs and songs that were ground into the ground before the kid was a twinkle in your eye -- will serve as the couple's first dance. As you watch your offspring and new in-law twirl around the dance floor, you will reach for a glass of Champagne Loko (President Kid Rock won't try to ban the stuff until he's up for re-election in 2032) and wonder how everything went so, so wrong.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The TexUFOrnia Illuminaughty
A secret summer 1999 meeting of some of the strangest oddballs on the planet. I may be murdered for releasing this classified photo.
Robert Sterling of The Konformist, SMiles Lewis of Elfis.net, radio host Robert Larson of Out The Rabbit Hole at KUCI.org, Peter Stenshoel of Southern California Public Radio, gonzo author Adam Gorightly and Greg Bishop of The Excluded Middle.
Audacity of 'austerity,' 2010 Word of the Year
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101220/ap_on_re_us/us_word_of_the_year
Audacity of 'austerity,' 2010 Word of the Year
RUSSELL CONTRERAS, Associated Press
Mon Dec 20, 2010
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – As Greece faced a debt crisis, the government passed a series of strict austerity measures, including taxes hikes and cutting public sector pay.
The move sparked angry protests, strikes and riots across the country as unemployment skyrocketed and the crisis spread to other European nations. The move also incited a rush to online dictionaries from those searching for a definition.
Austerity, the 14th century noun defined as "the quality or state of being austere" and "enforced or extreme economy," set off enough searches that Merriam-Webster named it as its Word of the Year for 2010, the dictionary's editors announced Monday.
John Morse, president and publisher of the Springfield, Mass.-based dictionary, said "austerity" saw more than 250,000 searches on the dictionary's free online tool and came with more coverage of the debt crisis.
"What we look for ... what are the words that have had spikes that strike us very much as an anomaly for their regular behavior," Morse said. "The word that really qualifies this year for that is 'austerity'."
Runners-up also announced Monday included "pragmatic," "moratorium," "socialism," and "bigot" — the last word resulted from public uses by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former CNN host Rick Sanchez and former NPR senior analyst Juan Williams.
Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large, said this year's top 10 words were associated with a news event or coverage, which editors believe resulted in prolonged jumps in searches.
"Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint the searches on one particular news event, but typically that is what sparks people's curiosity in a word," Sokolowski said.
For example, "socialism" was searched, editors believe, because of coverage around federal bailouts and Democratic-backed federal health care legislation. And editors noticed that "pragmatic" was looked-up a number of times after midterm elections.
According to Morse, the dictionary's online website sees more than 500 million searches a year — with most of those being usual suspects like "effect" and "affect." But he said words selected for the dictionary's top 10 were words that had searches hundreds of thousands of out-of-character hits.
Also making the top ten list was the word "doppelganger." Sokolowski said the word saw a jump in searches after George Stephanopoulos of ABC's "Good Morning America" called "Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert "Julia Roberts' doppelganger." Roberts played Gilbert in the book's film adaptation and resembles the writer.
"Doppelganger" was also used in the popular television show, "The Vampire Diaries."
"Sometimes, that all it takes," Sokolowski said.
Words "shellacking," "ebullient," "dissident," and "furtive" also made this year's top list.
Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and author of "OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word," said the list of words shows how the country is evolving because the public is looking up words that used to be very common.
"Around 20 to 30 years ago, everyone would know what 'socialism' was," said Metcalf, who is also executive secretary of the American Dialect Society. "Same with bigot. That fact that they have to be looked up says something about us."
That's true with some words like "shellacking," said Jenna Portier, an English instructor at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La. Although Merriam-Webster editors said searches for the word spiked after President Barack Obama said he and his party took "a shellacking" from voters in midterm election, Portier said the word is very common in southern Louisiana. "Where I'm from, it means to varnish something like wood," Portier said.
Shana Walton, a languages and literature professor also at Nicholls State University, said she understands how news events maybe influenced the dictionary's list.
"If 'moratorium' is one of the most looked-up words, that's clearly a reflection of how often the word was used in the wake of the BP oil spill," said Walton, a linguistic anthropologist who is doing research on oil and land in south Louisiana. "Many people in south Louisiana expressed much more outrage about the moratorium, frankly, than about the spill."
Metcalf said the American Dialect Society will release its "Word of the Year" winner in January, but it's selected by the group like Time's Person of the Year.
Audacity of 'austerity,' 2010 Word of the Year
RUSSELL CONTRERAS, Associated Press
Mon Dec 20, 2010
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – As Greece faced a debt crisis, the government passed a series of strict austerity measures, including taxes hikes and cutting public sector pay.
The move sparked angry protests, strikes and riots across the country as unemployment skyrocketed and the crisis spread to other European nations. The move also incited a rush to online dictionaries from those searching for a definition.
Austerity, the 14th century noun defined as "the quality or state of being austere" and "enforced or extreme economy," set off enough searches that Merriam-Webster named it as its Word of the Year for 2010, the dictionary's editors announced Monday.
John Morse, president and publisher of the Springfield, Mass.-based dictionary, said "austerity" saw more than 250,000 searches on the dictionary's free online tool and came with more coverage of the debt crisis.
"What we look for ... what are the words that have had spikes that strike us very much as an anomaly for their regular behavior," Morse said. "The word that really qualifies this year for that is 'austerity'."
Runners-up also announced Monday included "pragmatic," "moratorium," "socialism," and "bigot" — the last word resulted from public uses by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former CNN host Rick Sanchez and former NPR senior analyst Juan Williams.
Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large, said this year's top 10 words were associated with a news event or coverage, which editors believe resulted in prolonged jumps in searches.
"Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint the searches on one particular news event, but typically that is what sparks people's curiosity in a word," Sokolowski said.
For example, "socialism" was searched, editors believe, because of coverage around federal bailouts and Democratic-backed federal health care legislation. And editors noticed that "pragmatic" was looked-up a number of times after midterm elections.
According to Morse, the dictionary's online website sees more than 500 million searches a year — with most of those being usual suspects like "effect" and "affect." But he said words selected for the dictionary's top 10 were words that had searches hundreds of thousands of out-of-character hits.
Also making the top ten list was the word "doppelganger." Sokolowski said the word saw a jump in searches after George Stephanopoulos of ABC's "Good Morning America" called "Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert "Julia Roberts' doppelganger." Roberts played Gilbert in the book's film adaptation and resembles the writer.
"Doppelganger" was also used in the popular television show, "The Vampire Diaries."
"Sometimes, that all it takes," Sokolowski said.
Words "shellacking," "ebullient," "dissident," and "furtive" also made this year's top list.
Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and author of "OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word," said the list of words shows how the country is evolving because the public is looking up words that used to be very common.
"Around 20 to 30 years ago, everyone would know what 'socialism' was," said Metcalf, who is also executive secretary of the American Dialect Society. "Same with bigot. That fact that they have to be looked up says something about us."
That's true with some words like "shellacking," said Jenna Portier, an English instructor at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La. Although Merriam-Webster editors said searches for the word spiked after President Barack Obama said he and his party took "a shellacking" from voters in midterm election, Portier said the word is very common in southern Louisiana. "Where I'm from, it means to varnish something like wood," Portier said.
Shana Walton, a languages and literature professor also at Nicholls State University, said she understands how news events maybe influenced the dictionary's list.
"If 'moratorium' is one of the most looked-up words, that's clearly a reflection of how often the word was used in the wake of the BP oil spill," said Walton, a linguistic anthropologist who is doing research on oil and land in south Louisiana. "Many people in south Louisiana expressed much more outrage about the moratorium, frankly, than about the spill."
Metcalf said the American Dialect Society will release its "Word of the Year" winner in January, but it's selected by the group like Time's Person of the Year.
Stoner Cooking: Beer and Bacon Mancakes
http://redhot.bettycrocker.com/recipes/#03
Ingredients
1/2 lb bacon (8 slices)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups Original Bisquick® mix
1 cup of your favorite regular or nonalcoholic beer
2 eggs
Beer and Bacon Mancakes
Trend: Man Up, Eat Up
Prep Time: 55 Minutes
Start to Finish: 1 Hour 10 Minutes
Makes: 6 Mancakes
Directions
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheet with foil. Place wire rack on top of cookie sheet. Arrange bacon in single layer on top of rack. Bake 10 minutes.
2. Sprinkle bacon with half the brown sugar. Bake 10 minutes longer. Turn bacon over; sprinkle with remaining brown sugar. Bake 10 to 15 minutes longer or until golden brown. Remove from rack. Cool completely, about 15 minutes. Crumble bacon into small pieces; set aside.
3. Heat griddle or skillet over medium-high heat or electric griddle to 375°F; grease with vegetable oil or shortening.
4. In medium bowl, beat Bisquick mix, beer and eggs with whisk until blended. If batter is too thick, add additional beer until desired consistency. Stir in bacon. Pour by 1/2 cupfuls onto hot griddle. Cook until edges are dry. Turn; cook until golden brown.
The animal world has its junkies too
http://www.pjonline.com/christmas/pj2010_723
The animal world has its junkies too
Fri, 17/12/2010
Reindeer seeking the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom
Andrew Haynes kicks off 2010’s Christmas miscellany with reports of rampant reindeer, sozzled starlings and junkie monkeys, and a look at how goats seem to be the cause of many of man’s sins
Research scientists have used many animal species in investigating mind-altering drugs, but it may come as a surprise to learn that animals in the wild — from starlings to reindeer — also make use of psychoactive substances of their own accord.
It seems that many of these species have a natural desire to experience altered states of consciousness, and man may well have found his way to some of his favourite recreational drugs by observing the behaviour of animals.
Rampant reindeer
In their use of hallucinogenic plants is where animals really go to town. There is evidence from around the world of animals deliberately consuming such plants, and legends about plants used in sacred rituals often include references to animals introducing them to mankind.
One such species, appropriately for a Christmassy article, is the reindeer, which goes to great lengths to search out the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) — the one with the white-spotted red cap that garden gnomes like to sit on. Eating the toadstool makes reindeer behave in a drunken fashion, running about aimlessly and making strange noises. Head-twitching is also common.
Fly agaric is found across the northern hemisphere and has long been used by mankind for its psychotropic properties. But its use can be dangerous because it also contains toxic substances. Reindeer seem to metabolise these toxic elements without harm, while the main psychoactive constituents remain unmetabolised and are excreted in the urine. Reindeer herders in Europe and Asia long ago learnt to collect the reindeer urine for use as a comparatively safe source of the hallucinogen.
Another hallucinogen used by wild animals is the African plant iboga (Tabernanthe iboga). It has been reported from Gabon and the Congo that boars, porcupines, gorillas and mandrills will dig up and eat the powerfully hallucinogenic roots.
In the Canadian Rockies, wild bighorn sheep are said to take great risks to get at a rare psychoactive lichen. In scraping it off the rock surface they can wear their teeth down to the gums.
On the prairies of the south-west US, horses and other grazing mammals can become addicted to hallucinogen-containing plants known generically as locoweed. These plants, mainly species of Astragalus and Oxytropis, are normally avoided, but animals that try them can come back time and again for a repeat fix. Symptoms include altered gait, aimless wandering, impaired vision, erratic behaviour and listlessness.
In South America’s rain forests, jaguars have been filmed behaving in a kittenish manner after gnawing the bitter roots and bark of yage (Banisteriopsis caapi), a hallucinogenic vine that is also used by native tribes in ritualistic ceremonies. Some anthropologists believe that man first learnt to use the drug after watching jaguars.
Mention of this big cat leads finally to perhaps the best known recreational drug used by animals — catnip (Nepeta spp). About two-thirds of adult domestic cats are susceptible to its effects, as are several other species of cat, including lions.
Catnip’s effects are due to volatile terpenoids called nepetalactones. When cats sense the bruised leaves or stems of catnip, they may roll over it, paw at it, chew it or lick it, all the while inhaling the aromatic oil. They tend to leap about friskily or roll on the ground, but they may also show signs of drowsiness or anxiety. The effects last for five to 15 minutes, after which puss will not be sensitive to another dose for at least an hour.
One thing in catnip’s favour is that it appears to have no harmful long-term effects — which is more than can be said for any of the other substances animals ingest for a buzz.
Around the world, many traditions claim that man was led to alcohol use by observing animal behaviour. According to the Bible, when Noah had settled down after the flood, he saw one of his goats frolicking about after eating fermenting grapes. He followed the goat’s example, and on his way home he became merry, started to sing, managed to lose his clothes and then fell asleep outside his house.
Well, we’ve all done that, haven’t we? Noah clearly remembered his experience as pleasurable, for the next day he went off to gather vines to establish the world’s first vineyard.
Whether or not man really discovered alcohol by watching tipsy animals, he has certainly used this intoxicant for millennia. And animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, have probably used it for much longer.
Fruits, grains, nectars and saps can all have a high enough sugar content to be fermented by natural yeasts. Bees, wasps, hornets and other insects may get a buzz from the resultant booze. They are probably attracted by the sugars and yeast rather than the alcohol, but they still end up schnockered, losing co-ordination and falling to the ground.
If intoxicated honey bees manage to get back to the hive, they may finish up on their backs helplessly waving their legs in the air. However, the hive door bouncers do not condone this behaviour, and the offenders are liable to be roughed up and may even have their legs chewed off.
Sozzled starlings
Birds can also enjoy a tipple. There have been many reports of birds crashing into windows while smashed on fermented fruit or grain. Finches, waxwings and starlings seem particularly susceptible, and some species will deliberately go back for more. Waxwings have been found dead in heaps near sources of fermenting rowan berries, and post-mortem examinations have shown that they died drunk, with acute alcoholic liver disease.
Mammals too. There have been reports of bears and elk accidentally becoming drunk and disorderly after eating fermenting fruit.
Some large mammals are known to seek out alcohol in its man-made form deliberately. In rural areas of North America they often target illegal stills, and law enforcers sometimes track down the stills simply by looking out for woozy wildlife.
In the Indian state of West Bengal there have been several reported incidents of elephants breaking into illegal alcohol stores and drinking themselves silly before going on the rampage, trampling people to death and causing extensive damage to property.
But stories of alcohol-mad animals should be treated with caution.
Travellers’ tales about drunken African elephants go back to the early 19th century, and modern tourist brochures claim that elephants with a taste for alcohol can detect the fermenting fruit of the marula tree from 10km, but recent research suggests that these stories have no foundation.
Goats as scapegoats
Caffeine is another drug that man allegedly discovered by observing goat behaviour. According to tradition, in the ninth century, an Ethiopian goatherd named Khaldi noticed his goats dancing around frenziedly after eating the bright red berries of the shrub we now know as Coffea arabica. He tried a few berries himself, felt elated and introduced his find to the monks in the local monastery.
However, it is now believed that monks in the Ethiopian highlands were using coffee as a stimulant well before Khaldi’s time. But since man has been herding goats for at least 7,000 years, it is certainly possible that goats are ultimately to blame for Starbucks.
As with alcohol and caffeine, goats may also have to carry the can for man’s discovery of khat, the popular Middle Eastern stimulant, which contains ephedrine-like alkaloids. Legend says that a Yemeni goatherd watched one of his goats run wild after chewing the leaves of Catha edulis. He decided to chew them himself, found them stimulating and introduced them to the world.
I now turn briefly to tobacco, at which point any goats reading this article can breathe a sign of relief, because their species cannot possibly be considered a scapegoat for man’s abuse of tobacco. The tobacco plant (Nicotiana spp) is a native of South America, and the human population first began inhaling tobacco smoke about 8,000 years ago, probably discovering its effects when the leaves were burnt ceremonially as incense.
The goat has a cast-iron alibi, since it did not reach South America until some 7,500 years later.
Although South American man may not have needed goats to point him towards tobacco, his use of cocaine may well have been inspired by a grazing mammal. The chewing of coca leaves (Erythroxylum spp) as a stimulant probably began around 5000BC, about the time when llamas were first domesticated.
Peruvian legend has it that llamas travelling in the Andean lowlands chewed coca leaves because their normal food plants were not available. Their human minders noted the sustaining effect of the leaves and copied their pack animals. Other legends have sloths and monkeys pioneering the use of coca.
Although birds eat coca seeds and various insects attack sprouting coca plants, none of these creatures seems to derive a stimulant effect from coca consumption. However, research has shown that coca-chewing garden snails can climb a glass rod in a travelling time 25 per cent less than that of snails fed on a regular diet of ivy.
Junkie monkeys
Man probably did not learn to use opium by watching animals because there is scant evidence for its narcotic use by wild creatures. However, since man began cultivating opium poppies, at least one species has learnt to use opium. That animal is the water buffalo.
In south-east Asia, some water buffalo will browse poppies that are waiting to be harvested. The animals become docile and tend to wander away from the small herds in which they normally move. The addiction never lasts long because the poppy capsules contain high levels of opium only for a brief period towards the end of the ripening process.
Once the harvest is over, the beasts’ behaviour returns to normal, but only after they have shown withdrawal symptoms such as tremors, restlessness and convulsions.
Finches and rodents will eat the oil-rich poppy seeds, but there is little evidence of addiction, mainly because the seeds have low alkaloid levels. Although there is also no evidence of invertebrates becoming intoxicated, the US army once tried to breed opiate-addicted insects as a search-and-destroy weapon against illegal opium plantations. The project was a complete failure.
But although there is little addiction to opium in its natural state, there are many tales of animals acquiring a taste for it once the resin has been harvested and dried.
One recent news story concerns a town in India plagued by junkie monkeys that have stolen opium from a factory that makes opium-based medicines. Now who is copying whom?
Armageddon in 2012? The truth behind the doomsday theories
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8216394/Armageddon-in-2012-The-truth-behind-the-doomsday-theories.html
UFOs
Armageddon in 2012? The truth behind the doomsday theories
The picturesque French village of Bugarach, southwestern France braces for invasion of UFO campaigners who believe it will be only place to survive Armageddon in 2012. Here we examine the fact and the fiction behind the most popular doomsday scenarios.
21 Dec 2010
1. Alien invasion/government confirmation of extraterrestrial contact
Alien invasion has been the subject of great works of fiction since HG Wells published War of the Worlds in 1898. Fear of such an attack such as from Mars, a species from outside our galaxy or beings from other dimensions, ebbs and flows with the general state of anxiety on Earth.
Researchers have found that fear of attack by aliens tends to rise at times of heightened fear about more terrestrial threats.
Believers cite increasing numbers of UFO sightings, the alleged crash of a disc at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and several seemingly credible photographs and videos of strange craft in our skies as evidence that such a threat is increasing.
Evidence: Photographs, videos, official releases that prove how governments around the world have monitored UFO activity for more than 50 years, stories by abductees and other claims by campaigners. But do any of these suggest that we're about to be taken over by a race of grey humanoids with large black eyes at any time in the future, let alone in 2012?
Likelihood: 0.1/10
2. Nibiru/Planet X/Wormwood
Thousands of web forums and sites propose the belief that sometime in the early years of the 21st century, a previously undiscovered planet will collide with or pass very close to the Earth destroying civilisation or causing a massive planetary cataclysm.
Nibiru was invented in the late 1960s by Zechariah Sitchin in a book. According to Sitchin, Nibiru is a planet in our solar system which follows an erratic orbit bringing it into the inner system every 3,700 years. But Sitchin never suggested that it would threaten the Earth.
Some even suggest that Nibiru is a brown dwarf sister to our own sun and will first be seen towards the end of this year.
Evidence: Very little. Some point to the 2005 announcement by Nasa that a 10th planet had been discovered on the outer fringes of our solar system and many think that it will pass close to the Earth in 2012. But this 10th planet is most certainly not moving into the inner solar system.
Likelihood: 0.2/10
3. Solar catastrophe
This is one of the few doomsday scenarios connected with the end of the Mayan calendar that may actually be based on science. In this scenario a vast solar flare or expulsion of gases from the sun in December 2012 will engulf the Earth wreaking havoc upon mankind and the planet's ecosystems. There is no evidence that such catastrophic events happened in the past.
Evidence: There may be some correlation between the observed 11-year solar cycle and the time cycles seen in the Mayan calendar although this evidence is rather weak. But whilst a solar flare from the sun could cause problems such as satellite damage and injury to unprotected astronauts and blackouts, the flare itself would not be powerful enough to destroy Earth, certainly not in 2012. In the far future, when the sun runs out of fuel, most scientists accept that it will swell into a red giant and engulf the Earth. But rather than happening in 2012, this event will happen no sooner than five billion years from now. Last year a Mayan elder dubunked the claims, insisting that time will not "run out" on December 21 of that year. Apolinario Chile Pixtun said he was tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the end of the world. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff," he said last year. Nasa has also said that the world was not coming to an end on December 21, 2012.
Likelihood: 0.3/10
4. Magnetic pole shift
A large section of doomsday believers believe a dramatic reversal of Earth's magnetic poles is imminent and that it will trigger a reversal of the planet's rotation and the subsequent catastrophic events.
They point to evidence of pole shifts in Earth's past and claim that these reversals can be calculated by studying sunspots or magnetic field theory. Many believe the Mayans and the ancient Egyptians discovered evidence of pole reversal events in the future and that the secrets have been covered up by today's governments.
Evidence: Work by scientists at Princeton University and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, indicates that Earth did rebalance itself 800 million years ago. They studied magnetic minerals in sedimentary rocks in Norway and found that the north pole shifted by more than 50 degrees (a quarter the distance from pole to pole, in effect) in under 20 million years.
Other scientists have also discovered that seasonal movements in both polar regions do effect the positioning of the poles. But where the scientists and the "doomers" differ greatly is over the timescale of any potential pole shift.
While the apocalyptic visionaries believe such a switch could happen in a very short time scale, geologists think that it would happen over a period of one million years.
Likelihood: 1/10
5. Supervolcano
A supervolcanic eruption would be larger than any volcanic eruption in modern history. Researchers believe this will happen when magma rose into the Earth's crust but would be unable to break through.
The resulting build in pressure would mean that at some point a huge area of land would be devastated as the magma blasted skyward. Such an event would, campaigners say, blast millions of tons of debris and poisonous gases into the atmosphere, and could either plunge the world into a so-called nuclear winter triggering an ice age or, at worst, wipe out life in parts or all of the planet.
Evidence: Most of the concern about 2012 and supervolanoes centres on the so-called super-caldera underneath Yellowstone Park in the United States.
Satellite images have over the past few years shown changes in the the movement of molten rock 10 miles under the surface.
Wayne Thatcher of the US Geological Survey recently told Nature magazine: "We know now how mobile and restless the Yellowstone caldera actually is."
Nobody actually knows whether the caldera will blow or, if it does, when such an event could take place.
Likelihood: 1/10
6. World War III
Almost as soon as the Second World War in 1945 ended and with a standoff between the Western Allies and the Eastern bloc in place through the middle of Europe, there was rising anxiety that the world would be consumed by another epic conflict.
When Russia exploded its first atomic bomb just two years later, a nuclear arms race between East and West began. The invention of hydrogen (thermonuclear) devices only accelerated the race which peaked in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world came closest to an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The build-up of weapons continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s but a dedicated hotline between the Kremlin and the White House and some arms control treaties reduced the threat of an accidental nuclear war. The threat diminished in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some believe the latest "war games" between North and South Korea
Evidence: Today, the fears of a nuclear exchange centre on the rising power of China and the American response and the possibility of wars between India and Pakistan or North and South Korea escalating into global conflicts.
Likelihood: 1.5/10
7. Mass casualty terrorism
Since September 11, 2001 and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington DC there have been fears about al Qaeda or another terrorist network acquiring weapons of mass destruction and devastating a major western city or releasing a chemical or biological attack.
Statements by governments about the risk of such an attack have done little to lessen the anxiety with both the British and American administrations raising the spectre of a stray nuclear weapon being detonated in a major city.
Dick Cheney, the former US vice president, is reported to have stated that he is haunted by thoughts of a mushroom cloud rising over an American downtown skyline.
Many conspiracy theories, particularly those who believe that the 9/11 attacks were actually planned and executed by rogue elements in the US administration, believe that there will be a so-called "false flag" nuclear attack to divert attention from the west's woes and usher in an era of martial law and totalitarian government. The UK's terror level was raised to "severe" in January. After the arrest of 12 men around Britain on Monday, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the country’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said the raids had been “absolutely necessary” to keep the public safe.
Evidence: Osama bin Laden famously declared a few years ago that his organisation has several nuclear devices but they were only a "deterrent". There has been some concern about several "loose" nukes from the former Soviet Union, particularly six so-called "suitcase" nukes.
But there is no evidence that al-Qaeda or anybody else holds nuclear weapons and several attempts by terrorists in the UK to make nerve or biological agents have proved inept failures. Nevertheless, concern now centres upon the instability of the Pakistan regime - a nuclear-equipped country - and fears that al-Qaeda or a Taliban group could topple the government and get its hands on nuclear weapons.
Likelihood: 2/10
8. Peak oil
The reduction of global oil stocks is a reality with the world's economies consuming - financial collapses excepted - ever-increasing amounts of the black gold.
But peak oil theory centres around supply and demand and postulates that, at some point, demand will outstrip supply. When is this likely to happen? Some believe that it already has while others think that it is likely to happen some time between now and 2020.
A number of doomer sites link peak oil with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Demand for oil outstripping supply would have huge consequences around the world given that most economies are powered by oil, agriculture is completely dependent upon it for fertilisers and pesticides and the plastics industry is based on oil extraction. A collapse in social order following a peak in oil production is, therefore, something to be taken seriously.
Evidence: Peak oil is a near certainty but two questions remain: when will it happen and will the world have developed alternative sources of fuel in time?
M. King Hubbert created the theory behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. The theory has successfully predicted the decline from oil fields and regions subsequently.
Optimistic observers do not believe that peak oil will occur before 2020 but admissions by some oil companies that they have overstated the reserves held underground have raised fears that we are at or may already have passed the peak.
A decline in investment in new oil fields and plant during the global recession has only served to emphasise our total dependence upon a finite resource.
Likelihood: 4/10
9. Bee colony collapse
More than a third of the commercial beehives in the US were lost to colony colapse disorder [CCD] in the winter of 2008. The syndrome, in which all of the worker bees in a colony die off suddenly, leaving nothing but a solitary queen wandering alone on empty frames, has spread to several countries in Europe already including France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
Several causes of the disease have been suggested, including the almost universally present varroa mite, certain pesticides, Israeli acute paralysis virus, climate change and mobile phone broadcasts, but none have yet been proved to be the culprit.
No cure has been found either, and as cases are reported in new countries the likelihood of a global pandemic leading to the extinction of the honeybee becomes a real possibility.
Evidence: Apart from the loss of the honey crop, without the honeybee several crops key to human life would be wiped out, including the soya bean, cotton, brassicas, several kinds of nut including brazil nuts and almonds, grapes, apples and sunflowers, the source of a large proportion of the world's vegetable oil. Almost a third of the world's food is directly traceable to the action of bees. If they became extinct severe shortages, starvation, violence and riots would surely follow.
Likelihood: 7/10
10. Environmental collapse
Today's mantra is climate change or man-made global warming. In previous decades pollution, soil depletion, the destruction of the ozone layer and an imminent ice age were the ecological catastrophes that faced us.
There is, of course, no doubt that man's impact upon his environment is getting worse although a large body of opinion believes that global warming is a liberal conspiracy and that the world has actually been cooling over the last decade.
A total environmental collapse brought about by runaway warming, toxic poisoning of the seas of parts of the inhabited areas of the world or a tipping point with some of the most crucial species (see Bee colony collapse above) would have a huge impact upon civilisation and could render parts of the world near uninhabitable. The world is however, attempting to combat this with key summits in Copenhagen, Denmark last December, and Cancun, Mexico, this month seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After two weeks of tense negotiations, the United Nations finally agreed on a way forward to keep global temperature rise below 2C (3.6F). David Cameron expressed his satisfaction at the climate change package that will see the rich world committed to forking out billions of pounds every year to stop global warming, but delay plans to cut carbon emissions.
Evidence: Few scientists dispute that the global average temperature has been rising for at least a century. This is despite rows over an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report into rising temperatures and another controversy surrounding the science behind climate change, dubbed “Climategate”, when leaked e-mails appeared to suggest that scientists at the University of East Anglia had manipulated climate change data.
The Government's chief scientific adviser Prof John Beddington has insisted that uncertainty about some aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction. Nasa scientists have reported that the past decade was the warmest on record, proving that global warming had continued “unabated”. Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, found average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5F (0.8C) since 1880, when records began.
Likelihood: 7/10
UFOs
Armageddon in 2012? The truth behind the doomsday theories
The picturesque French village of Bugarach, southwestern France braces for invasion of UFO campaigners who believe it will be only place to survive Armageddon in 2012. Here we examine the fact and the fiction behind the most popular doomsday scenarios.
21 Dec 2010
1. Alien invasion/government confirmation of extraterrestrial contact
Alien invasion has been the subject of great works of fiction since HG Wells published War of the Worlds in 1898. Fear of such an attack such as from Mars, a species from outside our galaxy or beings from other dimensions, ebbs and flows with the general state of anxiety on Earth.
Researchers have found that fear of attack by aliens tends to rise at times of heightened fear about more terrestrial threats.
Believers cite increasing numbers of UFO sightings, the alleged crash of a disc at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and several seemingly credible photographs and videos of strange craft in our skies as evidence that such a threat is increasing.
Evidence: Photographs, videos, official releases that prove how governments around the world have monitored UFO activity for more than 50 years, stories by abductees and other claims by campaigners. But do any of these suggest that we're about to be taken over by a race of grey humanoids with large black eyes at any time in the future, let alone in 2012?
Likelihood: 0.1/10
2. Nibiru/Planet X/Wormwood
Thousands of web forums and sites propose the belief that sometime in the early years of the 21st century, a previously undiscovered planet will collide with or pass very close to the Earth destroying civilisation or causing a massive planetary cataclysm.
Nibiru was invented in the late 1960s by Zechariah Sitchin in a book. According to Sitchin, Nibiru is a planet in our solar system which follows an erratic orbit bringing it into the inner system every 3,700 years. But Sitchin never suggested that it would threaten the Earth.
Some even suggest that Nibiru is a brown dwarf sister to our own sun and will first be seen towards the end of this year.
Evidence: Very little. Some point to the 2005 announcement by Nasa that a 10th planet had been discovered on the outer fringes of our solar system and many think that it will pass close to the Earth in 2012. But this 10th planet is most certainly not moving into the inner solar system.
Likelihood: 0.2/10
3. Solar catastrophe
This is one of the few doomsday scenarios connected with the end of the Mayan calendar that may actually be based on science. In this scenario a vast solar flare or expulsion of gases from the sun in December 2012 will engulf the Earth wreaking havoc upon mankind and the planet's ecosystems. There is no evidence that such catastrophic events happened in the past.
Evidence: There may be some correlation between the observed 11-year solar cycle and the time cycles seen in the Mayan calendar although this evidence is rather weak. But whilst a solar flare from the sun could cause problems such as satellite damage and injury to unprotected astronauts and blackouts, the flare itself would not be powerful enough to destroy Earth, certainly not in 2012. In the far future, when the sun runs out of fuel, most scientists accept that it will swell into a red giant and engulf the Earth. But rather than happening in 2012, this event will happen no sooner than five billion years from now. Last year a Mayan elder dubunked the claims, insisting that time will not "run out" on December 21 of that year. Apolinario Chile Pixtun said he was tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the end of the world. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff," he said last year. Nasa has also said that the world was not coming to an end on December 21, 2012.
Likelihood: 0.3/10
4. Magnetic pole shift
A large section of doomsday believers believe a dramatic reversal of Earth's magnetic poles is imminent and that it will trigger a reversal of the planet's rotation and the subsequent catastrophic events.
They point to evidence of pole shifts in Earth's past and claim that these reversals can be calculated by studying sunspots or magnetic field theory. Many believe the Mayans and the ancient Egyptians discovered evidence of pole reversal events in the future and that the secrets have been covered up by today's governments.
Evidence: Work by scientists at Princeton University and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, indicates that Earth did rebalance itself 800 million years ago. They studied magnetic minerals in sedimentary rocks in Norway and found that the north pole shifted by more than 50 degrees (a quarter the distance from pole to pole, in effect) in under 20 million years.
Other scientists have also discovered that seasonal movements in both polar regions do effect the positioning of the poles. But where the scientists and the "doomers" differ greatly is over the timescale of any potential pole shift.
While the apocalyptic visionaries believe such a switch could happen in a very short time scale, geologists think that it would happen over a period of one million years.
Likelihood: 1/10
5. Supervolcano
A supervolcanic eruption would be larger than any volcanic eruption in modern history. Researchers believe this will happen when magma rose into the Earth's crust but would be unable to break through.
The resulting build in pressure would mean that at some point a huge area of land would be devastated as the magma blasted skyward. Such an event would, campaigners say, blast millions of tons of debris and poisonous gases into the atmosphere, and could either plunge the world into a so-called nuclear winter triggering an ice age or, at worst, wipe out life in parts or all of the planet.
Evidence: Most of the concern about 2012 and supervolanoes centres on the so-called super-caldera underneath Yellowstone Park in the United States.
Satellite images have over the past few years shown changes in the the movement of molten rock 10 miles under the surface.
Wayne Thatcher of the US Geological Survey recently told Nature magazine: "We know now how mobile and restless the Yellowstone caldera actually is."
Nobody actually knows whether the caldera will blow or, if it does, when such an event could take place.
Likelihood: 1/10
6. World War III
Almost as soon as the Second World War in 1945 ended and with a standoff between the Western Allies and the Eastern bloc in place through the middle of Europe, there was rising anxiety that the world would be consumed by another epic conflict.
When Russia exploded its first atomic bomb just two years later, a nuclear arms race between East and West began. The invention of hydrogen (thermonuclear) devices only accelerated the race which peaked in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world came closest to an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The build-up of weapons continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s but a dedicated hotline between the Kremlin and the White House and some arms control treaties reduced the threat of an accidental nuclear war. The threat diminished in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some believe the latest "war games" between North and South Korea
Evidence: Today, the fears of a nuclear exchange centre on the rising power of China and the American response and the possibility of wars between India and Pakistan or North and South Korea escalating into global conflicts.
Likelihood: 1.5/10
7. Mass casualty terrorism
Since September 11, 2001 and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington DC there have been fears about al Qaeda or another terrorist network acquiring weapons of mass destruction and devastating a major western city or releasing a chemical or biological attack.
Statements by governments about the risk of such an attack have done little to lessen the anxiety with both the British and American administrations raising the spectre of a stray nuclear weapon being detonated in a major city.
Dick Cheney, the former US vice president, is reported to have stated that he is haunted by thoughts of a mushroom cloud rising over an American downtown skyline.
Many conspiracy theories, particularly those who believe that the 9/11 attacks were actually planned and executed by rogue elements in the US administration, believe that there will be a so-called "false flag" nuclear attack to divert attention from the west's woes and usher in an era of martial law and totalitarian government. The UK's terror level was raised to "severe" in January. After the arrest of 12 men around Britain on Monday, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the country’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said the raids had been “absolutely necessary” to keep the public safe.
Evidence: Osama bin Laden famously declared a few years ago that his organisation has several nuclear devices but they were only a "deterrent". There has been some concern about several "loose" nukes from the former Soviet Union, particularly six so-called "suitcase" nukes.
But there is no evidence that al-Qaeda or anybody else holds nuclear weapons and several attempts by terrorists in the UK to make nerve or biological agents have proved inept failures. Nevertheless, concern now centres upon the instability of the Pakistan regime - a nuclear-equipped country - and fears that al-Qaeda or a Taliban group could topple the government and get its hands on nuclear weapons.
Likelihood: 2/10
8. Peak oil
The reduction of global oil stocks is a reality with the world's economies consuming - financial collapses excepted - ever-increasing amounts of the black gold.
But peak oil theory centres around supply and demand and postulates that, at some point, demand will outstrip supply. When is this likely to happen? Some believe that it already has while others think that it is likely to happen some time between now and 2020.
A number of doomer sites link peak oil with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Demand for oil outstripping supply would have huge consequences around the world given that most economies are powered by oil, agriculture is completely dependent upon it for fertilisers and pesticides and the plastics industry is based on oil extraction. A collapse in social order following a peak in oil production is, therefore, something to be taken seriously.
Evidence: Peak oil is a near certainty but two questions remain: when will it happen and will the world have developed alternative sources of fuel in time?
M. King Hubbert created the theory behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. The theory has successfully predicted the decline from oil fields and regions subsequently.
Optimistic observers do not believe that peak oil will occur before 2020 but admissions by some oil companies that they have overstated the reserves held underground have raised fears that we are at or may already have passed the peak.
A decline in investment in new oil fields and plant during the global recession has only served to emphasise our total dependence upon a finite resource.
Likelihood: 4/10
9. Bee colony collapse
More than a third of the commercial beehives in the US were lost to colony colapse disorder [CCD] in the winter of 2008. The syndrome, in which all of the worker bees in a colony die off suddenly, leaving nothing but a solitary queen wandering alone on empty frames, has spread to several countries in Europe already including France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
Several causes of the disease have been suggested, including the almost universally present varroa mite, certain pesticides, Israeli acute paralysis virus, climate change and mobile phone broadcasts, but none have yet been proved to be the culprit.
No cure has been found either, and as cases are reported in new countries the likelihood of a global pandemic leading to the extinction of the honeybee becomes a real possibility.
Evidence: Apart from the loss of the honey crop, without the honeybee several crops key to human life would be wiped out, including the soya bean, cotton, brassicas, several kinds of nut including brazil nuts and almonds, grapes, apples and sunflowers, the source of a large proportion of the world's vegetable oil. Almost a third of the world's food is directly traceable to the action of bees. If they became extinct severe shortages, starvation, violence and riots would surely follow.
Likelihood: 7/10
10. Environmental collapse
Today's mantra is climate change or man-made global warming. In previous decades pollution, soil depletion, the destruction of the ozone layer and an imminent ice age were the ecological catastrophes that faced us.
There is, of course, no doubt that man's impact upon his environment is getting worse although a large body of opinion believes that global warming is a liberal conspiracy and that the world has actually been cooling over the last decade.
A total environmental collapse brought about by runaway warming, toxic poisoning of the seas of parts of the inhabited areas of the world or a tipping point with some of the most crucial species (see Bee colony collapse above) would have a huge impact upon civilisation and could render parts of the world near uninhabitable. The world is however, attempting to combat this with key summits in Copenhagen, Denmark last December, and Cancun, Mexico, this month seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After two weeks of tense negotiations, the United Nations finally agreed on a way forward to keep global temperature rise below 2C (3.6F). David Cameron expressed his satisfaction at the climate change package that will see the rich world committed to forking out billions of pounds every year to stop global warming, but delay plans to cut carbon emissions.
Evidence: Few scientists dispute that the global average temperature has been rising for at least a century. This is despite rows over an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report into rising temperatures and another controversy surrounding the science behind climate change, dubbed “Climategate”, when leaked e-mails appeared to suggest that scientists at the University of East Anglia had manipulated climate change data.
The Government's chief scientific adviser Prof John Beddington has insisted that uncertainty about some aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction. Nasa scientists have reported that the past decade was the warmest on record, proving that global warming had continued “unabated”. Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, found average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5F (0.8C) since 1880, when records began.
Likelihood: 7/10
World's time is up in 2012 as 'Armageddon will destroy Earth'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8216311/Worlds-time-is-up-in-2012-as-Armageddon-will-destroy-Earth-campaigners-believe.html
World's time is up in 2012 as 'Armageddon will destroy Earth', campaigners believe
The world’s time is up in 2012, the year of Armageddon, according to both Nostradamus and Mayan prophesy.
According to campaigners, 2012 is a "year of spiritual transformation".
21 Dec 2010
Several “eclectic authors” claim that a “major, world-changing event” will take place during the same year of the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
According to campaigners, 2012 is a “year of spiritual transformation”.
The doomsday theorists quote the 1995 book, The Mayan Prophecies, which links the Maya calendar with long-period sunspot cycles. A Mayan elder has since dismissed those suggestions.
Another book, The Nostradamus Code, details a series of natural disasters caused by a comet… which will allow “the third anti-Christ to disperse his troops around the globe under the guise of aid in preparation for a nuclear war”.
“2012 is someverdana claimed to be a year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse),” the website Armageddon online says.
“Many esoteric sources interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order.
“Although there is a distinct lack of evidence from the extant records of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization that they themselves considered this occurrence in 2012 would signify end of the world.”
It adds: “Many new age spiritualists and philosophers ("new-agers") believe humankind will enter an age of enlightenment in 2012.”
It comes as the picturesque French village of Bugarach, southwestern France braces for an invasion of UFO campaigners, who are booking one way tickets there next year.
The village has become the focus of internet buzz as being the only place on Earth that will survive Armageddon in 2012.
Some campaigners believe its mountain Le Pic de Bugarech, is a UFO garage.
Nostradamus stayed in the neighbourhood because he liked its culture and Hitler, Mitterrand and Mossad allegedly conducted mysterious digs there.
World's time is up in 2012 as 'Armageddon will destroy Earth', campaigners believe
The world’s time is up in 2012, the year of Armageddon, according to both Nostradamus and Mayan prophesy.
According to campaigners, 2012 is a "year of spiritual transformation".
21 Dec 2010
Several “eclectic authors” claim that a “major, world-changing event” will take place during the same year of the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
According to campaigners, 2012 is a “year of spiritual transformation”.
The doomsday theorists quote the 1995 book, The Mayan Prophecies, which links the Maya calendar with long-period sunspot cycles. A Mayan elder has since dismissed those suggestions.
Another book, The Nostradamus Code, details a series of natural disasters caused by a comet… which will allow “the third anti-Christ to disperse his troops around the globe under the guise of aid in preparation for a nuclear war”.
“2012 is someverdana claimed to be a year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse),” the website Armageddon online says.
“Many esoteric sources interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order.
“Although there is a distinct lack of evidence from the extant records of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization that they themselves considered this occurrence in 2012 would signify end of the world.”
It adds: “Many new age spiritualists and philosophers ("new-agers") believe humankind will enter an age of enlightenment in 2012.”
It comes as the picturesque French village of Bugarach, southwestern France braces for an invasion of UFO campaigners, who are booking one way tickets there next year.
The village has become the focus of internet buzz as being the only place on Earth that will survive Armageddon in 2012.
Some campaigners believe its mountain Le Pic de Bugarech, is a UFO garage.
Nostradamus stayed in the neighbourhood because he liked its culture and Hitler, Mitterrand and Mossad allegedly conducted mysterious digs there.
FT names Steve Jobs as Person of the Year
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/FT_names_Steve_Jobs_as_Person_of_the_Year/551-113917-547.html
FT names Steve Jobs as Person of the Year
Samir Makwana, Dec 24, 2010
Noted for coming up with three revolutionary products
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been titled as Person of the Year by Financial Times. Widely know has the visionary for Apple products who has taken some crucial decision to roll out one of the best products of this decade in mobile and computing segment. Be it iPhone or thin MacBook Air, Jobs was the one to uncover it publicly. Side-lining the modern age nerd Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, few decades back Steve Jobs played a formative role in popularizing the personal computer and made Apple's public offering at the young age of 25.
TIME did make into news and faced some heat after naming Facebook's young CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the Person of the Year. Three years ago, Apple's iPhone changed the way we interact with the phone and then followed the iPod touch that has still left many portable media player way behind in the competition. Earlier this year we saw the 9.7-inch screen bearing iPad tablet that continued to be the top searched term, heavily admired, and secretly desired product of this year. Steve Jobs has been credited for continuously tapping the demand for right gadgets at the right time and perfected to suit average user's requirements.
Yes, Jobs has been heavily criticized for limiting the features in the Apple products and taking decision on behalf of millions. Apple products love them, hate them or try to resist them. You can't ignore them. That's what Steve Jobs has created and bred in the technology domain.
Recently US President Barack Obama cited Steve Jobs as an example for a person who Americans should "expect to be rich" as an incentive for others.
FT names Steve Jobs as Person of the Year
Samir Makwana, Dec 24, 2010
Noted for coming up with three revolutionary products
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been titled as Person of the Year by Financial Times. Widely know has the visionary for Apple products who has taken some crucial decision to roll out one of the best products of this decade in mobile and computing segment. Be it iPhone or thin MacBook Air, Jobs was the one to uncover it publicly. Side-lining the modern age nerd Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, few decades back Steve Jobs played a formative role in popularizing the personal computer and made Apple's public offering at the young age of 25.
TIME did make into news and faced some heat after naming Facebook's young CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the Person of the Year. Three years ago, Apple's iPhone changed the way we interact with the phone and then followed the iPod touch that has still left many portable media player way behind in the competition. Earlier this year we saw the 9.7-inch screen bearing iPad tablet that continued to be the top searched term, heavily admired, and secretly desired product of this year. Steve Jobs has been credited for continuously tapping the demand for right gadgets at the right time and perfected to suit average user's requirements.
Yes, Jobs has been heavily criticized for limiting the features in the Apple products and taking decision on behalf of millions. Apple products love them, hate them or try to resist them. You can't ignore them. That's what Steve Jobs has created and bred in the technology domain.
Recently US President Barack Obama cited Steve Jobs as an example for a person who Americans should "expect to be rich" as an incentive for others.
Another WikiLeaks Cable from the Bush Administration About My Movies...
a note from Michael Moore
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Friends,
Twice within four days, my name has popped up in the Bush-era secret cables uncovered by WikiLeaks. Lucky me. Though nowhere near as earth-shattering as the uncovering of American misdeeds in Iraq and Afghanistan, these classified cables provide a stunning and bizarre peek into the paranoid minds of the Bush White House when it came to the subject of one Michael Francis Moore.
And considering how WikiLeaks has released only 1,826 cables of its planned drop of 251,287 -- and I've already played a starring role twice -- I can only say I await with bemused anticipation how the moi-storyline will play itself out.
The most recent secret cable revelation is in today's Guardian newspaper of London. It's entitled, "US Intervened in Michael Moore NZ Screening." Oh yeah, baby! New Zealand! That's where we'll stop Moore and his band of evildoers!
The date was July 30, 2004. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was already a huge hit in the United States. Just to give you an idea how huge, it had hit #1 at the box office, the only documentary to have ever accomplished this feat, and had made more on its opening weekend than 'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.'
But it was no easy path to get there. Disney (which owned Miramax) was apoplectic when they saw the final cut. So they pulled the film from its theatrical schedule. Then they put a permanent block on its release, insuring no one would see it. But then the New York Times, in a front page story, reported that the real reason Disney hated 'Fahrenheit' was they were worried about the tax breaks it got in Jeb Bush's Florida for Disney World. This caused some embarrassment, so Disney then sold 'Fahrenheit' to the Weinstein Bros., who said they'd spend their own money to distribute it.
The release of the film caused concern at the White House, as this was the re-election year. They hired a pollster who told them the film might tip the election. That was enough for them to swing into action. Much of July was a nonstop barrage of attacks on me and the movie. But that just resulted in more tickets being sold.
Which brings us to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. There are few nations on earth further away from us. A local chapter of the ruling Labor Party apparently had decided to do a fundraising screening of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' It was to be hosted by the Prime Minister's Cabinet Secretary for the Environment.
Well, when the U.S. Embassy in Wellington got word of this, it was like all heck broke loose. America was offended! Phone calls were made to the Prime Minister! Then to the Cabinet Secretary! We ... are ... not ... happy!
Apparently, the Kiwis backed down and the Cabinet Secretary withdrew as the host. A sigh of relief whiffed its way through the American embassy. Moore stopped! The cable back to Washington showed the embassy had no problem taking credit for putting the kabosh on yours truly:
"... it is probable that this potential fiasco may only have been averted because of our phone calls -- it is apparent to us that neither the Minister nor anyone else in the Labour government seems to have thought there was anything wrong with a senior Minister hosting such an event."
So here's my question:
Really?
I mean, seriously -- really? This is how the Bush State Department was spending its time -- on a single screening of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' in freakin' New Zealand? Or maybe ... was this kind of interference happening just to New Zealand? Call me crazy, but I gotta feelin' it doesn't stop there. Just as a health insurance executive has now come forward as a whistleblower to reveal the millions spent to smear 'Sicko,' I can't help wait for that day when the whistleblower from the Bush White House comes forward to tell the fascinating tale of how the Bush team believed they had to do something -- anything -- to stop 'Fahrenheit.' Or worse (like the "Plan B" the health insurance companies discussed -- to "push Michael Moore off a cliff."). I didn't want to think about what the Bush Plan B would be. Just wasn't worth the crazy-making. So I ignored the things I'd hear, kept my head down and motored on.
But, it does make you wonder. And I ask you, is it fair to pose the question: If they were this focused on some insignificant screening in New Zealand, what else were they up to? And I don't mean in regards to me. I mean anyone who was on their enemies list ...
I can't wait to read more classified cables.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
P.S. Of course, given the false claims the State Department made in the other "secret" cable about my movie 'Sicko,' I guess anything was possible.
P.P.S. Don't miss the REAL revelations from just the first batch of WikiLeaks cables. For instance, the Obama administration worked together with Republicans to kill an investigation by Spain into Bush's torture. Pfizer hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on the Attorney General of Nigeria. Bush's ambassador to France planned to "retaliate" against the country for standing up to Monsanto. And we're less than 1% of the way through ...
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Friends,
Twice within four days, my name has popped up in the Bush-era secret cables uncovered by WikiLeaks. Lucky me. Though nowhere near as earth-shattering as the uncovering of American misdeeds in Iraq and Afghanistan, these classified cables provide a stunning and bizarre peek into the paranoid minds of the Bush White House when it came to the subject of one Michael Francis Moore.
And considering how WikiLeaks has released only 1,826 cables of its planned drop of 251,287 -- and I've already played a starring role twice -- I can only say I await with bemused anticipation how the moi-storyline will play itself out.
The most recent secret cable revelation is in today's Guardian newspaper of London. It's entitled, "US Intervened in Michael Moore NZ Screening." Oh yeah, baby! New Zealand! That's where we'll stop Moore and his band of evildoers!
The date was July 30, 2004. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was already a huge hit in the United States. Just to give you an idea how huge, it had hit #1 at the box office, the only documentary to have ever accomplished this feat, and had made more on its opening weekend than 'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.'
But it was no easy path to get there. Disney (which owned Miramax) was apoplectic when they saw the final cut. So they pulled the film from its theatrical schedule. Then they put a permanent block on its release, insuring no one would see it. But then the New York Times, in a front page story, reported that the real reason Disney hated 'Fahrenheit' was they were worried about the tax breaks it got in Jeb Bush's Florida for Disney World. This caused some embarrassment, so Disney then sold 'Fahrenheit' to the Weinstein Bros., who said they'd spend their own money to distribute it.
The release of the film caused concern at the White House, as this was the re-election year. They hired a pollster who told them the film might tip the election. That was enough for them to swing into action. Much of July was a nonstop barrage of attacks on me and the movie. But that just resulted in more tickets being sold.
Which brings us to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. There are few nations on earth further away from us. A local chapter of the ruling Labor Party apparently had decided to do a fundraising screening of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' It was to be hosted by the Prime Minister's Cabinet Secretary for the Environment.
Well, when the U.S. Embassy in Wellington got word of this, it was like all heck broke loose. America was offended! Phone calls were made to the Prime Minister! Then to the Cabinet Secretary! We ... are ... not ... happy!
Apparently, the Kiwis backed down and the Cabinet Secretary withdrew as the host. A sigh of relief whiffed its way through the American embassy. Moore stopped! The cable back to Washington showed the embassy had no problem taking credit for putting the kabosh on yours truly:
"... it is probable that this potential fiasco may only have been averted because of our phone calls -- it is apparent to us that neither the Minister nor anyone else in the Labour government seems to have thought there was anything wrong with a senior Minister hosting such an event."
So here's my question:
Really?
I mean, seriously -- really? This is how the Bush State Department was spending its time -- on a single screening of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' in freakin' New Zealand? Or maybe ... was this kind of interference happening just to New Zealand? Call me crazy, but I gotta feelin' it doesn't stop there. Just as a health insurance executive has now come forward as a whistleblower to reveal the millions spent to smear 'Sicko,' I can't help wait for that day when the whistleblower from the Bush White House comes forward to tell the fascinating tale of how the Bush team believed they had to do something -- anything -- to stop 'Fahrenheit.' Or worse (like the "Plan B" the health insurance companies discussed -- to "push Michael Moore off a cliff."). I didn't want to think about what the Bush Plan B would be. Just wasn't worth the crazy-making. So I ignored the things I'd hear, kept my head down and motored on.
But, it does make you wonder. And I ask you, is it fair to pose the question: If they were this focused on some insignificant screening in New Zealand, what else were they up to? And I don't mean in regards to me. I mean anyone who was on their enemies list ...
I can't wait to read more classified cables.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
P.S. Of course, given the false claims the State Department made in the other "secret" cable about my movie 'Sicko,' I guess anything was possible.
P.P.S. Don't miss the REAL revelations from just the first batch of WikiLeaks cables. For instance, the Obama administration worked together with Republicans to kill an investigation by Spain into Bush's torture. Pfizer hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on the Attorney General of Nigeria. Bush's ambassador to France planned to "retaliate" against the country for standing up to Monsanto. And we're less than 1% of the way through ...
FeedBack: Peace On Earth
A Holiday Thought...
Aren't humans amazing? They kill wildlife - birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed.
Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer.
So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases.
Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.
Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."
~Revised Preface to Old MacDonald's Factory Farm by C. David Coates~
_____________
Anyone can break this cycle of violence! Everyone has the power to choose compassion! Please visit these websites to align your core values with life affirming choices: http://veganvideo.org/ & http://tryveg.com/
"Any great change must expect opposition because it shakes the very foundation of privilege."
Lucretia Coffin Mott, 1793-1880, minister, women's rights leader, abolitionist, peace activist, humanitarian
Aren't humans amazing? They kill wildlife - birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed.
Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer.
So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases.
Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.
Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."
~Revised Preface to Old MacDonald's Factory Farm by C. David Coates~
_____________
Anyone can break this cycle of violence! Everyone has the power to choose compassion! Please visit these websites to align your core values with life affirming choices: http://veganvideo.org/ & http://tryveg.com/
"Any great change must expect opposition because it shakes the very foundation of privilege."
Lucretia Coffin Mott, 1793-1880, minister, women's rights leader, abolitionist, peace activist, humanitarian
Germany's Economy Shows Government "Interference" Works
http://www.truth-out.org/germanys-economy-shows-government-interference-works66090
Germany's Economy Shows Government "Interference" Works
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Dave Johnson | Campaign for America's Future
Can we compete with China's wages? Does government interference and regulation hold us back? Are our unions keeping us from being competitive? Do we need to lower our standard of living in a race to the bottom? You might be surprised to learn that Germany pays higher wages, has strong unions, has much more government involvement and is doing better as a result. Conclusion: our wages, unions and government are not the problem, they are the solution.
In July I wrote about something Harold Meyerson wrote about Germany and China and manufacturing and recession.
"Germany is NOT a low-wage country. But they weathered the recession. They value manufacturing and have national policies to bolster their manufacturers."
Today I want to write about something Harold Meyerson wrote about Germany and manufacturing and the recession. In Save the economy by keeping jobs at home, Meyerson writes,
"Hourly manufacturing compensation (wages plus benefits) was $48 in Germany in 2008 - the most recent year surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics - while it was $32 in the United States."
Yet Germany is an export giant, while we are the colossus of imports.
Please go read Meyerson's entire piece.
In Germany, workers also get six weeks vacation - by law, federally mandated, a right. They get health care, university, child care and pensions and as a result they have higher productivity. In Germany, the government requires worker representatives to hold seats on the boards of directors of companies, depending on the number of workers. Government-funded research and vocational training, and policies to retain skilled workers bring another competitive advantage. Germany values manufacturing and the government has an industrial policy. The government is currently helping promote green manufacturing, for example.
The result of all this government interference is that Germany's export-oriented manufacturing economy recovered from the recession and is doing OK, and their workers are paid well and have great benefits.
Socialism?
Our government is supposed to be of, by and for the people. But today in the U.S. it is considered "socialistic" to talk about these things because it violates the dominant conservative "free market" ideology that is designed to enrich a few at the expense of the rest of us. If we try to talk about a national industrial/economic policy, it is derided with such slogans as "government interference" or "picking winners and losers." If the discussion is allowed it very quickly will move to the dominance of fossil fuels and the other industries that are holding us back but have a lock on influence over the government. If we talk about taking the burden of health care off of the people and businesses, the giant insurance companies beat it back, calling it "socialized medicine," to keep us from doing something about how their profits are draining the rest of the economy. And imagine the furor that would result if anyone even suggested mandating worker representatives on boards of directors so the companies take the interests of workers and communities into account!
Our adherence to conservative free-market ideology is clearly holding our country back. The ideology is designed to transfer wealth from the public to a very few, and hold the lead of the already-dominant. This is killing market innovation and it is destroying our competitiveness and standard of living. We should be looking at what works for the country instead of what keeps the few at the top at the top.
Just Who Is Interfering With Our System?
We need to develop a national economic/industrial policy to help us with our competitive position relative to the rest of the world. We need Medicare-For-All to lower the burden on our people and companies. We need to reorient our labor policies to bring better wages and benefits to our people. We need to restore a level playing field on which innovative smaller companies can complete with the giants—who are interfering with the system while complaining that the attempts by We, the People to stop them are interfering with our system.
Later we can talk about whether China's government interferes with its businesses, and how their economic growth is doing compared to ours.
Germany's Economy Shows Government "Interference" Works
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Dave Johnson | Campaign for America's Future
Can we compete with China's wages? Does government interference and regulation hold us back? Are our unions keeping us from being competitive? Do we need to lower our standard of living in a race to the bottom? You might be surprised to learn that Germany pays higher wages, has strong unions, has much more government involvement and is doing better as a result. Conclusion: our wages, unions and government are not the problem, they are the solution.
In July I wrote about something Harold Meyerson wrote about Germany and China and manufacturing and recession.
"Germany is NOT a low-wage country. But they weathered the recession. They value manufacturing and have national policies to bolster their manufacturers."
Today I want to write about something Harold Meyerson wrote about Germany and manufacturing and the recession. In Save the economy by keeping jobs at home, Meyerson writes,
"Hourly manufacturing compensation (wages plus benefits) was $48 in Germany in 2008 - the most recent year surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics - while it was $32 in the United States."
Yet Germany is an export giant, while we are the colossus of imports.
Please go read Meyerson's entire piece.
In Germany, workers also get six weeks vacation - by law, federally mandated, a right. They get health care, university, child care and pensions and as a result they have higher productivity. In Germany, the government requires worker representatives to hold seats on the boards of directors of companies, depending on the number of workers. Government-funded research and vocational training, and policies to retain skilled workers bring another competitive advantage. Germany values manufacturing and the government has an industrial policy. The government is currently helping promote green manufacturing, for example.
The result of all this government interference is that Germany's export-oriented manufacturing economy recovered from the recession and is doing OK, and their workers are paid well and have great benefits.
Socialism?
Our government is supposed to be of, by and for the people. But today in the U.S. it is considered "socialistic" to talk about these things because it violates the dominant conservative "free market" ideology that is designed to enrich a few at the expense of the rest of us. If we try to talk about a national industrial/economic policy, it is derided with such slogans as "government interference" or "picking winners and losers." If the discussion is allowed it very quickly will move to the dominance of fossil fuels and the other industries that are holding us back but have a lock on influence over the government. If we talk about taking the burden of health care off of the people and businesses, the giant insurance companies beat it back, calling it "socialized medicine," to keep us from doing something about how their profits are draining the rest of the economy. And imagine the furor that would result if anyone even suggested mandating worker representatives on boards of directors so the companies take the interests of workers and communities into account!
Our adherence to conservative free-market ideology is clearly holding our country back. The ideology is designed to transfer wealth from the public to a very few, and hold the lead of the already-dominant. This is killing market innovation and it is destroying our competitiveness and standard of living. We should be looking at what works for the country instead of what keeps the few at the top at the top.
Just Who Is Interfering With Our System?
We need to develop a national economic/industrial policy to help us with our competitive position relative to the rest of the world. We need Medicare-For-All to lower the burden on our people and companies. We need to reorient our labor policies to bring better wages and benefits to our people. We need to restore a level playing field on which innovative smaller companies can complete with the giants—who are interfering with the system while complaining that the attempts by We, the People to stop them are interfering with our system.
Later we can talk about whether China's government interferes with its businesses, and how their economic growth is doing compared to ours.
Palast Arrested
Busted by BP in Azerbaijan
Greg Palast
Monday, December 20, 2010
BP's Azeri police arresting Palast for filming BP oil rig - Baku, Azerbaijan, December 2010"Here in Azerbaijan we believe in human rights. PLEASE GIVE US YOUR FILM."
Oh, no, no, not good.
The enforcers here come in three colors: the military police still wearing their old Russian puke-green uniforms, the MSN (the dictator's secret police) in windbreakers without ID, and BP's own corporate police force in black tunics, sashes and full hats who look like toy soldiers from the Nutcracker ballet. They weren't dancing.
I showed all three flavors of police our press credentials in both English and Azeri, neither of which could be read by the officers. (The dictator had suddenly changed the Azeri alphabet, making most of the nation illiterate overnight.)
The dictator made everyone call him, "Baba," Grandpa.
I told the dumbest-looking one, "Look here: This paper says your so-called President is a weasel's rectum," which our 'fixer' translated as, "This letter from Foreign Ministry is authorization to make a documentary for the British Television."
We'd been surreptitiously filming BP's cancer-making machine, the giant pipeline terminal near Baku, the capital, that sends the Azeri's Caspian Sea oil eastward to light Europe's Christmas trees.
Now, it looked like I'd be spending Christmas in Baba's dungeon licking rats for breakfast. My clown-show antics bought the crew the precious minutes needed to switch the film in the camera to blanks. Our cameraman told a BP cop, with mime: "Hadn't begun filming yet, Old Bean."
We would now. I clicked on my hidden micro-cam.
BP's Azeri police badge depicting oil drilling rigA black SUV arrived on the remote desert track and unloaded its impressive cargo, a colonel sprinkled with medals from the recent war Azerbaijan lost to Armenia. The colonel said, "British Petroleum drives this country," and as a "British" journalist, he thought I'd be as proud of that fact as he is.
"I know," I said. "Believe me, I know."
There is an awful lot of evidence that BP and Britain's MI6 had their hands in Baba's 1993 coup d'état which overthrew the nation's elected president. Within months of taking power, Baba signed "The Contract of the Century" giving BP monopoly control of Azerbaijan's Caspian reserves."
Baba headed the KGB when this Islamic land was an occupied "republic" of the Soviet Union, the good old days of relative peace, freedom and prosperity.
I was here in the desert to investigate a tip-off I'd had that BP had a near-disaster at its Caspian offshore rig that was extraordinarily similar to the Deepwater Horizon blow-out. But BP covered it up.
What I didn't know was that WikiLeaks was about to release a State Department memo which referred to a small piece of this BP game. Rather than go to Azerbaijan to check the facts, the Wiki newspapers called BP in London for comment.
That put BP on high alert and my sources in high danger.
Palast pictured in front of BP offshore oil rig in Baku, Azerbaijan, December 2010So the Baba-BP police were more than curious about our film which we promised was about nothing more than, "the business boom in Central Asia." Of course, we didn't add that the only business booming here is corruption and BP's oil drilling. (I don't use the plural here because it is a single industry.)
How the crew and I (and the poor shepherd on a little horse swept up with us) were released is a complex story involving an impromptu banquet with the Secret Police and the poignant recanting of a statement about BP made to us by an environmental activist.
I understood his need to back down. The night before, we dined with a young video blogger who'd just gotten out of prison after the current president (now Baba's son, Baby Baba), saw the blogger hold a press conference in a donkey suit. The President had no doubt that he was the ass. He was. He is.
Welcome to the Islamic Republic of BP, otherwise known as Azerbaijan. And good-bye.
I'm out of there. Out with the evidence we need about BP and how it lead to the Gulf of Mexico blow-out and an extension of the occupation of Iraq.
It's a hell of a story, and my holiday gift to myself is that I'm here and ready to tell it.
My best wishes to you and your family.
*
Won't you please support this work, the "Arctic to Amazon investigation"?
I need seven more committed folks to make a tax-deductible donation of at least $1000 to cover the remaining work. Donate at least $1,000 and we will, with your approval, list you as a co-producer in the video version of this important film already scheduled for broadcast everywhere but the USA.
And we MUST bring it to America. That will require more help for the US production and print reports. Don't have $1,000 or $5000? All donations to the Palast Investigative Fund are tax-deductible and keep us going.
We had to leave the secret filming equipment in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital; we were warned by a friendly plainclothesman that they knew I had it and needed to ditch it.
I've now taken our crew from the Amazon rainforest to BP's next drilling target above the Arctic Circle, to Africa and now to Central Asia. We must now go to the most dangerous locales yet: deepest darkest Washington DC, and London, home to BP, whose natives are heavily armed with lawyers and PR bullshit.
Please help me drill down to the truth with your tax deductible donation to the Palast Fund. Donations of $50 or more receive, if you wish, a gift I will sign. (Make the request today or tomorrow, Dec. 21, and I'll send it priority within 12 hours.)
Three big European networks have combined to cover our travel costs and some filming; but none have the money to support the deep investigation, the endless hours of research, that provide the hard facts on which the filming must be based.
Special, exceptional thanks go to the Cloud Mountain and Puffin foundations for their faith in our work and to the 2,000 wonderful supporters who have sent us donations.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All... and to all, a good night.
Greg Palast, reporting from... somewhere safe.
Greg Palast is an investigative journalist and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His reports can be seen on BBC Newsnight.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
GregPalast.com
Greg Palast
Monday, December 20, 2010
BP's Azeri police arresting Palast for filming BP oil rig - Baku, Azerbaijan, December 2010"Here in Azerbaijan we believe in human rights. PLEASE GIVE US YOUR FILM."
Oh, no, no, not good.
The enforcers here come in three colors: the military police still wearing their old Russian puke-green uniforms, the MSN (the dictator's secret police) in windbreakers without ID, and BP's own corporate police force in black tunics, sashes and full hats who look like toy soldiers from the Nutcracker ballet. They weren't dancing.
I showed all three flavors of police our press credentials in both English and Azeri, neither of which could be read by the officers. (The dictator had suddenly changed the Azeri alphabet, making most of the nation illiterate overnight.)
The dictator made everyone call him, "Baba," Grandpa.
I told the dumbest-looking one, "Look here: This paper says your so-called President is a weasel's rectum," which our 'fixer' translated as, "This letter from Foreign Ministry is authorization to make a documentary for the British Television."
We'd been surreptitiously filming BP's cancer-making machine, the giant pipeline terminal near Baku, the capital, that sends the Azeri's Caspian Sea oil eastward to light Europe's Christmas trees.
Now, it looked like I'd be spending Christmas in Baba's dungeon licking rats for breakfast. My clown-show antics bought the crew the precious minutes needed to switch the film in the camera to blanks. Our cameraman told a BP cop, with mime: "Hadn't begun filming yet, Old Bean."
We would now. I clicked on my hidden micro-cam.
BP's Azeri police badge depicting oil drilling rigA black SUV arrived on the remote desert track and unloaded its impressive cargo, a colonel sprinkled with medals from the recent war Azerbaijan lost to Armenia. The colonel said, "British Petroleum drives this country," and as a "British" journalist, he thought I'd be as proud of that fact as he is.
"I know," I said. "Believe me, I know."
There is an awful lot of evidence that BP and Britain's MI6 had their hands in Baba's 1993 coup d'état which overthrew the nation's elected president. Within months of taking power, Baba signed "The Contract of the Century" giving BP monopoly control of Azerbaijan's Caspian reserves."
Baba headed the KGB when this Islamic land was an occupied "republic" of the Soviet Union, the good old days of relative peace, freedom and prosperity.
I was here in the desert to investigate a tip-off I'd had that BP had a near-disaster at its Caspian offshore rig that was extraordinarily similar to the Deepwater Horizon blow-out. But BP covered it up.
What I didn't know was that WikiLeaks was about to release a State Department memo which referred to a small piece of this BP game. Rather than go to Azerbaijan to check the facts, the Wiki newspapers called BP in London for comment.
That put BP on high alert and my sources in high danger.
Palast pictured in front of BP offshore oil rig in Baku, Azerbaijan, December 2010So the Baba-BP police were more than curious about our film which we promised was about nothing more than, "the business boom in Central Asia." Of course, we didn't add that the only business booming here is corruption and BP's oil drilling. (I don't use the plural here because it is a single industry.)
How the crew and I (and the poor shepherd on a little horse swept up with us) were released is a complex story involving an impromptu banquet with the Secret Police and the poignant recanting of a statement about BP made to us by an environmental activist.
I understood his need to back down. The night before, we dined with a young video blogger who'd just gotten out of prison after the current president (now Baba's son, Baby Baba), saw the blogger hold a press conference in a donkey suit. The President had no doubt that he was the ass. He was. He is.
Welcome to the Islamic Republic of BP, otherwise known as Azerbaijan. And good-bye.
I'm out of there. Out with the evidence we need about BP and how it lead to the Gulf of Mexico blow-out and an extension of the occupation of Iraq.
It's a hell of a story, and my holiday gift to myself is that I'm here and ready to tell it.
My best wishes to you and your family.
*
Won't you please support this work, the "Arctic to Amazon investigation"?
I need seven more committed folks to make a tax-deductible donation of at least $1000 to cover the remaining work. Donate at least $1,000 and we will, with your approval, list you as a co-producer in the video version of this important film already scheduled for broadcast everywhere but the USA.
And we MUST bring it to America. That will require more help for the US production and print reports. Don't have $1,000 or $5000? All donations to the Palast Investigative Fund are tax-deductible and keep us going.
We had to leave the secret filming equipment in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital; we were warned by a friendly plainclothesman that they knew I had it and needed to ditch it.
I've now taken our crew from the Amazon rainforest to BP's next drilling target above the Arctic Circle, to Africa and now to Central Asia. We must now go to the most dangerous locales yet: deepest darkest Washington DC, and London, home to BP, whose natives are heavily armed with lawyers and PR bullshit.
Please help me drill down to the truth with your tax deductible donation to the Palast Fund. Donations of $50 or more receive, if you wish, a gift I will sign. (Make the request today or tomorrow, Dec. 21, and I'll send it priority within 12 hours.)
Three big European networks have combined to cover our travel costs and some filming; but none have the money to support the deep investigation, the endless hours of research, that provide the hard facts on which the filming must be based.
Special, exceptional thanks go to the Cloud Mountain and Puffin foundations for their faith in our work and to the 2,000 wonderful supporters who have sent us donations.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All... and to all, a good night.
Greg Palast, reporting from... somewhere safe.
Greg Palast is an investigative journalist and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His reports can be seen on BBC Newsnight.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
GregPalast.com
The Little Bill That Could
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/the-little-bill-that-coul_b_798768.html
Timothy Karr
Campaign Director, Free Press and SavetheInternet.com
December 19, 2010
The Little Bill That Could
Little noticed but extremely important to progressives, on Saturday afternoon Congress also passed the Local Community Radio Act.
This legislation opens up radio spectrum to hundreds, if not thousands, of local independent radio stations (also known as LPFM).
Its passing will bring new choices and voices on the radio dial nationwide, but is especially relevant to a broadcast area reaching 160 million people who lived in areas where these stations had previously been barred from local airwaves.
Anyone tracking the rise of radio personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage understands the primary political significance of gaining access to spectrum.
With the opening of the airwaves to LPFM stations, progressives can gain a small but consequential spot on the radio dial. The challenge now is to organize local groups to gain access to licenses. Follow and support the Prometheus Radio Project to learn more.
Shaming the lobbyists
This bill would not have passed without the tireless work of a small, but dedicated corps of radio activists who faced down one of the most powerful corporate lobbies in Washington -- the National Association of Broadcasters.
After ten years of pushing and broad-based organizing these activists got broadcasters to yield on Friday.
With the corporate lobby out of the way the bill passed both the House and the Senate in little more than 24 hours.
This is what's possible.
Timothy Karr
Campaign Director, Free Press and SavetheInternet.com
December 19, 2010
The Little Bill That Could
Little noticed but extremely important to progressives, on Saturday afternoon Congress also passed the Local Community Radio Act.
This legislation opens up radio spectrum to hundreds, if not thousands, of local independent radio stations (also known as LPFM).
Its passing will bring new choices and voices on the radio dial nationwide, but is especially relevant to a broadcast area reaching 160 million people who lived in areas where these stations had previously been barred from local airwaves.
Anyone tracking the rise of radio personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage understands the primary political significance of gaining access to spectrum.
With the opening of the airwaves to LPFM stations, progressives can gain a small but consequential spot on the radio dial. The challenge now is to organize local groups to gain access to licenses. Follow and support the Prometheus Radio Project to learn more.
Shaming the lobbyists
This bill would not have passed without the tireless work of a small, but dedicated corps of radio activists who faced down one of the most powerful corporate lobbies in Washington -- the National Association of Broadcasters.
After ten years of pushing and broad-based organizing these activists got broadcasters to yield on Friday.
With the corporate lobby out of the way the bill passed both the House and the Senate in little more than 24 hours.
This is what's possible.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Words of the Year
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19sifton.html
The Words of the Year
The Justin Bieber, Shellacking, Vuvuzela: Three new additions to the lexicon.
SAM SIFTON and GRANT BARRETT
December 18, 2010
Vuvuzela is a great word, one of the best to enter American popular culture in 2010, though it sounds nothing like an actual vuvuzela. A vuvuzela sounds like a long, droning moan, a sound full of garbage and tennis balls.
The vuvuzela’s long, plastic barrel provided Americans with the junk shot of sounds this year, the sort of noise you could hear even through a containment dome placed over a gushing underwater oil well owned by BP. (Though if you take a vuvuzela to the airport, you’re going to get an enhanced pat-down, sure as we could be entering a double-dip recession.)
Close your eyes while someone blows a vuvuzela and you can see all this clearly, as if it were playing on a spill-cam over your Web browser at work. Open them and it’s just a World Cup game highlight (speaking of great words: Uruguay vs. Ghana).
And the oil kept coming, all summer long, and with it new words — top kill, static kill, bottom kill — that meant failure, until at bottom they didn’t. (There may be put-backs for mortgage bonds. It doesn’t work so well with oil.)
Everyone was glad that the fish kill wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Dispersants may have worked. But the blowout preventer did not.
Refudiate is almost a better word than vuvuzela, because it’s not so much a real word as a neologism, one much of America attributes to Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, who used it in a Twitter message in July. (She took a real shellacking for that.) The Oxford University Press called it the word of the year.
But refudiate was not Ms. Palin’s word first, even if she unpacked the portmanteau all by her lonesome. David Segal of The New York Times had it in print in late June, in an article about people who sell marijuana for a living. They are not easy to interview.
“Simple yes-or-no questions yield 10-minute soliloquies,” he wrote. “Words are coined on the spot, like ‘refudiate,’ and regular words are used in ways that make sense only in context.”
It’s like a halfalogue, talking to those guys.
Speaking of, did you see “Inception”? (Can Ms. Palin refudiate a claim that she took the word refudiate from a sleeping marijuana salesman?) Did you i-dose on Justin Bieber videos (I’m a Belieber!) or contemplate becoming one of the Hollywood star whackers who sent Randy Quaid around a bend and up to Canada to seek asylum? Did you weep along with HungryBear’s double rainbow on YouTube, then seek double rainbows yourself?
Most important of all, did you stand for or against the ground zero mosque near the ground zero Century 21, some blocks away from ground zero itself but almost directly next door to a bar?
G.Z.M. was a big word for 2010, until it was not. On that subject, there was quantitative easing as soon as the midterm elections were over.
QE2! — Sam Sifton
The Words That Made the Year
The old and new puns, slang and jargon that we lived with this year. Compiled by Grant Barrett.
Pop Culture
belieber: A fan of Justin Bieber, the Canadian pop singer who also spawned ...
the Justin Bieber: A haircut also known as the flip and switch, the flow, or the twitch. Now driving parents crazy everywhere.
G.T.L.: For “gym, tan, laundry,” the life philosophy of the Situation, otherwise known as Mike Sorrentino of the reality TV program “Jersey Shore.” You laugh, but it’s worked for him.
i-dosing: A supposed digital drug. Certain soundwaves, the claim goes, give listeners a high. Skeptics abound, watchful parents are everywhere.
star whacker: The latest in celeb coinage. In October, the actor Randy Quaid and his wife, Evi, begged for asylum in Canada, claiming fear of star whackers, people who had already killed other famous people and were out to get them, too.
Communicating
coffice: In South Korea, a coffee shop habitually used as an office by customers, who mooch its space, electricity, Wi-Fi and other resources. Presumably, they pay for the coffee.
halfalogue: Half of a conversation, like an overheard phone call. The term was coined in the research paper “Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Less Speech is More Distracting” in the journal Psychological Science.
sofalize: A British marketing term created for people who prefer to stay home and communicate with others electronically.
mansplainer: A man compelled to explain or give an opinion about everything — especially to a woman. He speaks, often condescendingly, even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or even if it’s none of his business. Old term: a boor.
social graph: The structure of personal networks, who people know and how they know them, especially online. The term probably came from the internal lingo at Facebook, but it has spread widely among technology companies.
Politics
demon sheep: The political ad that captured critics everywhere for being “baaad,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. The Senate campaign of Carly Fiorina used and retired the ad, but other campaigns quickly created their own parodies.
mama grizzly: Coined by Sarah Palin, “mama grizzly” is the conservative woman’s battle cry, referring to mothers who ferociously defend their children or policies that benefit them. Often used with humor. In her new book, Ms. Palin wrote that it’s “bear propaganda” to insist that these bears are cute and cuddly.
poutrage: False outrage, usually put on for personal, financial or political gain.
refudiate: Another Palinism, this time a blend of refute and repudiate. Now used with an eyebrow raised.
shellacking: President Obama’s preferred way to describe what happened to Democrats in the midterm elections. Some might call it a knock-down punch.
Travel
cuddle class: Economy-class airplane seats that unfold into a bed or couch, as proposed by Air New Zealand, which calls them “Skycouch” seats.
porno scanner: A full-body security scanner that provoked outrage at airports and on blogs. Also called strip-search scanners and, more politely, by the Transportation Security Administration, advanced imaging technology.
enhanced pat-down: Frisking in which security workers slide the palms of their hands down a person’s body in a search for contraband or weapons.
Economy
double-dip recession: What economists talked about, and what every Obama administration official feared.
flash crash: The mystery of the financial markets this year: a May 6 market drop of almost 1,000 points.
peak water: Like “peak oil,” a theory that humans may have used the water easiest to obtain, and that scarcity may be on the rise.
QE2: Not the ocean liner, but the abbreviation for the Fed’s latest round of quantitative easing, its purchase of Treasury bonds. The term is usually used by critics derisively, and often in combination with another disaster, the sinking of the Titanic.
robo-signer and put-back: Even for people who never read their mortgage documents, these terms became inescapable as the foreclosure crisis hit. For the record, a robo-signer approves mortgage foreclosure notices without verifying its contents. A put-back is a mortgage sold back to an institutional seller because of problems with documentation.
The Oil Spill
containment dome: After the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, everyone became an engineer. The containment dome? Yes, that seals the leak.
junk shot: Plugging the leak with old tires, golf balls and other debris.
static kill: Sealing the well by pumping in a synthetic mud from the top.
bottom kill: The same technique, only many thousands of feet further down the well through a relief well. How we got this education: the 24-hour spillcam that broadcast the leak.
Things
inception: Popularized by the movie “Inception,” the word expanded from its usual meaning and now refers to ideas planted in the dreams of other people.
double rainbow: A phrase from the hugely popular YouTube video by Paul Vasquez, featuring his breathless amazement at the sight of two rainbows at Yosemite National Park. It spawned parodies, television commercials, dance mixes, Auto-Tune versions, parties and Halloween costumes, and is now used to refer — ironically and not — to something amazing.
E.V.: An electric vehicle. While the term has been around for decades, there are now more cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, which makes it more than an environmentalist’s pipeless dream.
G.Z.M.: An acronym for ground zero mosque — the shorthand term for a controversial Muslim community center proposed near the site where the World Trade Center was attacked.
vuvuzela: The South African plastic trumpet that invaded, like locusts, the World Cup matches in Johannesburg. Television viewers, as well as participants, couldn’t escape the buzzzzz.
Weird: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, an acronym and criticism of the typical subjects in studies by behavioral scientists. That is, they tend to be the easiest to recruit: undergraduates.
Grant Barrett is a lexicographer specializing in slang and new words. He is a host of the public radio program “A Way With Words” and vice president of the American Dialect Society, devoted since 1889 to the study of English in North America.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 19, 2010, on page WK1 of the New York edition.
The Words of the Year
The Justin Bieber, Shellacking, Vuvuzela: Three new additions to the lexicon.
SAM SIFTON and GRANT BARRETT
December 18, 2010
Vuvuzela is a great word, one of the best to enter American popular culture in 2010, though it sounds nothing like an actual vuvuzela. A vuvuzela sounds like a long, droning moan, a sound full of garbage and tennis balls.
The vuvuzela’s long, plastic barrel provided Americans with the junk shot of sounds this year, the sort of noise you could hear even through a containment dome placed over a gushing underwater oil well owned by BP. (Though if you take a vuvuzela to the airport, you’re going to get an enhanced pat-down, sure as we could be entering a double-dip recession.)
Close your eyes while someone blows a vuvuzela and you can see all this clearly, as if it were playing on a spill-cam over your Web browser at work. Open them and it’s just a World Cup game highlight (speaking of great words: Uruguay vs. Ghana).
And the oil kept coming, all summer long, and with it new words — top kill, static kill, bottom kill — that meant failure, until at bottom they didn’t. (There may be put-backs for mortgage bonds. It doesn’t work so well with oil.)
Everyone was glad that the fish kill wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Dispersants may have worked. But the blowout preventer did not.
Refudiate is almost a better word than vuvuzela, because it’s not so much a real word as a neologism, one much of America attributes to Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, who used it in a Twitter message in July. (She took a real shellacking for that.) The Oxford University Press called it the word of the year.
But refudiate was not Ms. Palin’s word first, even if she unpacked the portmanteau all by her lonesome. David Segal of The New York Times had it in print in late June, in an article about people who sell marijuana for a living. They are not easy to interview.
“Simple yes-or-no questions yield 10-minute soliloquies,” he wrote. “Words are coined on the spot, like ‘refudiate,’ and regular words are used in ways that make sense only in context.”
It’s like a halfalogue, talking to those guys.
Speaking of, did you see “Inception”? (Can Ms. Palin refudiate a claim that she took the word refudiate from a sleeping marijuana salesman?) Did you i-dose on Justin Bieber videos (I’m a Belieber!) or contemplate becoming one of the Hollywood star whackers who sent Randy Quaid around a bend and up to Canada to seek asylum? Did you weep along with HungryBear’s double rainbow on YouTube, then seek double rainbows yourself?
Most important of all, did you stand for or against the ground zero mosque near the ground zero Century 21, some blocks away from ground zero itself but almost directly next door to a bar?
G.Z.M. was a big word for 2010, until it was not. On that subject, there was quantitative easing as soon as the midterm elections were over.
QE2! — Sam Sifton
The Words That Made the Year
The old and new puns, slang and jargon that we lived with this year. Compiled by Grant Barrett.
Pop Culture
belieber: A fan of Justin Bieber, the Canadian pop singer who also spawned ...
the Justin Bieber: A haircut also known as the flip and switch, the flow, or the twitch. Now driving parents crazy everywhere.
G.T.L.: For “gym, tan, laundry,” the life philosophy of the Situation, otherwise known as Mike Sorrentino of the reality TV program “Jersey Shore.” You laugh, but it’s worked for him.
i-dosing: A supposed digital drug. Certain soundwaves, the claim goes, give listeners a high. Skeptics abound, watchful parents are everywhere.
star whacker: The latest in celeb coinage. In October, the actor Randy Quaid and his wife, Evi, begged for asylum in Canada, claiming fear of star whackers, people who had already killed other famous people and were out to get them, too.
Communicating
coffice: In South Korea, a coffee shop habitually used as an office by customers, who mooch its space, electricity, Wi-Fi and other resources. Presumably, they pay for the coffee.
halfalogue: Half of a conversation, like an overheard phone call. The term was coined in the research paper “Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Less Speech is More Distracting” in the journal Psychological Science.
sofalize: A British marketing term created for people who prefer to stay home and communicate with others electronically.
mansplainer: A man compelled to explain or give an opinion about everything — especially to a woman. He speaks, often condescendingly, even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or even if it’s none of his business. Old term: a boor.
social graph: The structure of personal networks, who people know and how they know them, especially online. The term probably came from the internal lingo at Facebook, but it has spread widely among technology companies.
Politics
demon sheep: The political ad that captured critics everywhere for being “baaad,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. The Senate campaign of Carly Fiorina used and retired the ad, but other campaigns quickly created their own parodies.
mama grizzly: Coined by Sarah Palin, “mama grizzly” is the conservative woman’s battle cry, referring to mothers who ferociously defend their children or policies that benefit them. Often used with humor. In her new book, Ms. Palin wrote that it’s “bear propaganda” to insist that these bears are cute and cuddly.
poutrage: False outrage, usually put on for personal, financial or political gain.
refudiate: Another Palinism, this time a blend of refute and repudiate. Now used with an eyebrow raised.
shellacking: President Obama’s preferred way to describe what happened to Democrats in the midterm elections. Some might call it a knock-down punch.
Travel
cuddle class: Economy-class airplane seats that unfold into a bed or couch, as proposed by Air New Zealand, which calls them “Skycouch” seats.
porno scanner: A full-body security scanner that provoked outrage at airports and on blogs. Also called strip-search scanners and, more politely, by the Transportation Security Administration, advanced imaging technology.
enhanced pat-down: Frisking in which security workers slide the palms of their hands down a person’s body in a search for contraband or weapons.
Economy
double-dip recession: What economists talked about, and what every Obama administration official feared.
flash crash: The mystery of the financial markets this year: a May 6 market drop of almost 1,000 points.
peak water: Like “peak oil,” a theory that humans may have used the water easiest to obtain, and that scarcity may be on the rise.
QE2: Not the ocean liner, but the abbreviation for the Fed’s latest round of quantitative easing, its purchase of Treasury bonds. The term is usually used by critics derisively, and often in combination with another disaster, the sinking of the Titanic.
robo-signer and put-back: Even for people who never read their mortgage documents, these terms became inescapable as the foreclosure crisis hit. For the record, a robo-signer approves mortgage foreclosure notices without verifying its contents. A put-back is a mortgage sold back to an institutional seller because of problems with documentation.
The Oil Spill
containment dome: After the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, everyone became an engineer. The containment dome? Yes, that seals the leak.
junk shot: Plugging the leak with old tires, golf balls and other debris.
static kill: Sealing the well by pumping in a synthetic mud from the top.
bottom kill: The same technique, only many thousands of feet further down the well through a relief well. How we got this education: the 24-hour spillcam that broadcast the leak.
Things
inception: Popularized by the movie “Inception,” the word expanded from its usual meaning and now refers to ideas planted in the dreams of other people.
double rainbow: A phrase from the hugely popular YouTube video by Paul Vasquez, featuring his breathless amazement at the sight of two rainbows at Yosemite National Park. It spawned parodies, television commercials, dance mixes, Auto-Tune versions, parties and Halloween costumes, and is now used to refer — ironically and not — to something amazing.
E.V.: An electric vehicle. While the term has been around for decades, there are now more cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, which makes it more than an environmentalist’s pipeless dream.
G.Z.M.: An acronym for ground zero mosque — the shorthand term for a controversial Muslim community center proposed near the site where the World Trade Center was attacked.
vuvuzela: The South African plastic trumpet that invaded, like locusts, the World Cup matches in Johannesburg. Television viewers, as well as participants, couldn’t escape the buzzzzz.
Weird: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, an acronym and criticism of the typical subjects in studies by behavioral scientists. That is, they tend to be the easiest to recruit: undergraduates.
Grant Barrett is a lexicographer specializing in slang and new words. He is a host of the public radio program “A Way With Words” and vice president of the American Dialect Society, devoted since 1889 to the study of English in North America.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 19, 2010, on page WK1 of the New York edition.
Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101218/ap_on_re_us/us_search_for_amelia
Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's
SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press
Sat Dec 18, 2010
NORMAN, Okla. – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.
Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.
"There's no guarantee," said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.
"You only have to say you have a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited. But it is true that, if they can get DNA, and if they can match it to Amelia Earhart's DNA, that's pretty good."
It could be months before scientists know for sure — and it could turn out the bones are from a turtle. The fragments were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.
Earhart's disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century's most enduring mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef?
"What were her last moments like? What was she doing? What happened?" asked Robin Jensen, an associate professor of communications at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who has studied Earhart's writings and speeches.
Since 1989, Gillespie's group has made 10 trips to the island, trying each time to find clues that might help determine the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Last spring, volunteers working at what seemed to be an abandoned campsite found one piece of bone that appeared to be from a neck and another unknown fragment dissimilar to bird or fish bones. A third fragment might be from a finger. The largest of the pieces is just over an inch long.
The area was near a site where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. Bird and fish carcasses suggested Westerners had prepared meals there.
"This site tells the story of how someone or some people attempted to live as castaways," Gillespie said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. "These fish weren't eaten like Pacific Islanders" eat fish.
Millions of dollars have been spent in failed attempts to learn what happened to Earhart, a Kansas native declared dead by a California court in early 1939.
The official version says Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and crashed at sea while flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel.
Gillespie's book "Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance," and "Amelia Earhart's Shoes," written by four volunteers from the aircraft group, suggest the pair landed on the reef and survived, perhaps for months, on scant food and rainwater.
Gillespie, a pilot, said the aviator would have needed only about 700 feet of unobstructed space to land because her plane would have been traveling only about 55 mph at touchdown.
"It looks like she could have landed successfully on the reef surrounding the island. It's very flat and smooth," Gillespie said. "At low tide, it looks like this place is surrounded by a parking lot."
However, Gillespie said, the plane, even if it landed safely, would have been slowly dragged into the sea by the tides. The waters off the reef are 1,000 to 2,000 feet deep. His group needs $3 million to $5 million for a deep-sea dive.
The island is on the course Earhart planned to follow from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel. Over the last seven decades, searches of the remote atoll have been inconclusive.
After the latest find, anthropologists who had previously worked with Gillespie's group suggested that he send the bones to the University of Oklahoma's Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, which has experience extracting genetic material from old bones. Gillespie's group also has a genetic sample from an Earhart female relative for comparison with the bones.
The lab is looking for mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along only through females, so there is no need to have a Noonan sample.
Cecil Lewis, an assistant professor of anthropology at the lab, said the university received a little more than a gram of bone fragments about two weeks ago. If researchers are able to extract DNA and link it to Earhart, a sample would be sent to another lab for verification.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's why we're trying to downplay a lot of the media attention right now," Lewis said. "For all we know, this is just a turtle bone, and a lot of people are going to be very disheartened."
Under the best circumstances, the analysis would take two weeks. If scientists have trouble with the sample, that time frame could stretch into months, Lewis said.
"Ancient DNA is incredibly unpredictable," he said.
Other material recovered this year also suggested the presence of Westerners at the isolated island site:
• Someone carried shells ashore before cutting them open and slicing out the meat. Islanders cut the meat out at sea.
• Bottles found nearby were melted on the bottom, suggesting they had been put into a fire, possibly to boil water. (A Coast Guard unit on the island during World War II would have had no need to boil water.)
• Bits of makeup were found. The group is checking to see which products Earhart endorsed and whether an inventory lists specific types of makeup carried on her final trip.
• A glass bottle with remnants of lanolin and oil, possibly hand lotion.
In 2007, the group found a piece of a pocket knife but didn't know whether it was left by the Coast Guard or castaways. This year, it found the shattered remains of the knife, suggesting someone had smashed it to extract the blades. Gillespie speculated a castaway used a blade to make a spear to stab shallow-water fish like those found at the campsite.
Following Earhart's disappearance, distress signals picked up by distant ships pointed back to the area of Nikumaroro Island, but while pilots passing over saw signs of recent habitation, the island was crossed off the list as having been searched, Gillespie said.
In 1940, a British overseer on the island recovered a partial human skeleton, a woman's shoe and an empty sextant box at what appeared to be a former campsite, littered with turtle, clamshell and bird remains.
Thinking of Earhart, the overseer sent the items to Fiji, where a British doctor decided they belonged to a stocky European or mixed-blood male, ruling out any Earhart connection.
The bones later vanished, but in 1998, Gillespie's group located the doctor's notes in London. Two other forensic specialists reviewed the doctor's bone measurements and agreed they were more "consistent with" a female of northern European descent, about Earhart's age and height.
On their own visits to the island, volunteers recovered an aluminum panel that could be from an Electra, another piece of a woman's shoe and a "cat's paw" heel dating from the 1930s; another shoe heel, possibly a man's, and an oddly cut piece of clear Plexiglas.
The sextant box might have been Noonan's. The woman's shoe and heel resemble a blucher-style oxford seen in a pre-takeoff photo of Earhart. The plastic shard is the exact thickness and curvature of an Electra's side window.
The body of evidence is intriguing, but Gillespie insists the team is "constantly agonizing over whether we are being dragged down a path that isn't right."
___
Associated Press Writer Kelly P. Kissel contributed to this report from Oklahoma City.
Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's
SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press
Sat Dec 18, 2010
NORMAN, Okla. – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.
Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.
"There's no guarantee," said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.
"You only have to say you have a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited. But it is true that, if they can get DNA, and if they can match it to Amelia Earhart's DNA, that's pretty good."
It could be months before scientists know for sure — and it could turn out the bones are from a turtle. The fragments were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.
Earhart's disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century's most enduring mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef?
"What were her last moments like? What was she doing? What happened?" asked Robin Jensen, an associate professor of communications at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who has studied Earhart's writings and speeches.
Since 1989, Gillespie's group has made 10 trips to the island, trying each time to find clues that might help determine the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Last spring, volunteers working at what seemed to be an abandoned campsite found one piece of bone that appeared to be from a neck and another unknown fragment dissimilar to bird or fish bones. A third fragment might be from a finger. The largest of the pieces is just over an inch long.
The area was near a site where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. Bird and fish carcasses suggested Westerners had prepared meals there.
"This site tells the story of how someone or some people attempted to live as castaways," Gillespie said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. "These fish weren't eaten like Pacific Islanders" eat fish.
Millions of dollars have been spent in failed attempts to learn what happened to Earhart, a Kansas native declared dead by a California court in early 1939.
The official version says Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and crashed at sea while flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel.
Gillespie's book "Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance," and "Amelia Earhart's Shoes," written by four volunteers from the aircraft group, suggest the pair landed on the reef and survived, perhaps for months, on scant food and rainwater.
Gillespie, a pilot, said the aviator would have needed only about 700 feet of unobstructed space to land because her plane would have been traveling only about 55 mph at touchdown.
"It looks like she could have landed successfully on the reef surrounding the island. It's very flat and smooth," Gillespie said. "At low tide, it looks like this place is surrounded by a parking lot."
However, Gillespie said, the plane, even if it landed safely, would have been slowly dragged into the sea by the tides. The waters off the reef are 1,000 to 2,000 feet deep. His group needs $3 million to $5 million for a deep-sea dive.
The island is on the course Earhart planned to follow from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel. Over the last seven decades, searches of the remote atoll have been inconclusive.
After the latest find, anthropologists who had previously worked with Gillespie's group suggested that he send the bones to the University of Oklahoma's Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, which has experience extracting genetic material from old bones. Gillespie's group also has a genetic sample from an Earhart female relative for comparison with the bones.
The lab is looking for mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along only through females, so there is no need to have a Noonan sample.
Cecil Lewis, an assistant professor of anthropology at the lab, said the university received a little more than a gram of bone fragments about two weeks ago. If researchers are able to extract DNA and link it to Earhart, a sample would be sent to another lab for verification.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's why we're trying to downplay a lot of the media attention right now," Lewis said. "For all we know, this is just a turtle bone, and a lot of people are going to be very disheartened."
Under the best circumstances, the analysis would take two weeks. If scientists have trouble with the sample, that time frame could stretch into months, Lewis said.
"Ancient DNA is incredibly unpredictable," he said.
Other material recovered this year also suggested the presence of Westerners at the isolated island site:
• Someone carried shells ashore before cutting them open and slicing out the meat. Islanders cut the meat out at sea.
• Bottles found nearby were melted on the bottom, suggesting they had been put into a fire, possibly to boil water. (A Coast Guard unit on the island during World War II would have had no need to boil water.)
• Bits of makeup were found. The group is checking to see which products Earhart endorsed and whether an inventory lists specific types of makeup carried on her final trip.
• A glass bottle with remnants of lanolin and oil, possibly hand lotion.
In 2007, the group found a piece of a pocket knife but didn't know whether it was left by the Coast Guard or castaways. This year, it found the shattered remains of the knife, suggesting someone had smashed it to extract the blades. Gillespie speculated a castaway used a blade to make a spear to stab shallow-water fish like those found at the campsite.
Following Earhart's disappearance, distress signals picked up by distant ships pointed back to the area of Nikumaroro Island, but while pilots passing over saw signs of recent habitation, the island was crossed off the list as having been searched, Gillespie said.
In 1940, a British overseer on the island recovered a partial human skeleton, a woman's shoe and an empty sextant box at what appeared to be a former campsite, littered with turtle, clamshell and bird remains.
Thinking of Earhart, the overseer sent the items to Fiji, where a British doctor decided they belonged to a stocky European or mixed-blood male, ruling out any Earhart connection.
The bones later vanished, but in 1998, Gillespie's group located the doctor's notes in London. Two other forensic specialists reviewed the doctor's bone measurements and agreed they were more "consistent with" a female of northern European descent, about Earhart's age and height.
On their own visits to the island, volunteers recovered an aluminum panel that could be from an Electra, another piece of a woman's shoe and a "cat's paw" heel dating from the 1930s; another shoe heel, possibly a man's, and an oddly cut piece of clear Plexiglas.
The sextant box might have been Noonan's. The woman's shoe and heel resemble a blucher-style oxford seen in a pre-takeoff photo of Earhart. The plastic shard is the exact thickness and curvature of an Electra's side window.
The body of evidence is intriguing, but Gillespie insists the team is "constantly agonizing over whether we are being dragged down a path that isn't right."
___
Associated Press Writer Kelly P. Kissel contributed to this report from Oklahoma City.
Kinect sex is here, game company says
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20025804-52.html
December 15, 2010
Kinect sex is here, game company says
Daniel Terdiman
The Kinect, from Microsoft, has been out for less than two months, and already, an adult game company has produced a demo using the motion controller in a 3D sex game.
Kinect sex has arrived, and it took the adult gaming community less than two months to get there.
Just more than two weeks ago, one of the world's leading experts on sex and video games said that while there were not yet working adult games using Microsoft's Kinect motion controller, the potential was there. That barrier has been broken, as one game company illustrates in a demo for a new game.
The demo (a NSFW YouTube video) comes from ThriXXX software, a maker of 3D role-playing sex simulation games, which said in a statement today that "the open-sourcing of device drivers for Kinect have enabled the...device to be used directly from connected PCs operating on Windows 7...The Kinect interface provides another exciting interface option for users of the sex simulation software to control the experience in extraordinary new ways. Controller-free is the next generation of game user interfaces, allowing users to use gestures, spoken commands, or objects to control in-game action that creates a completely new sex game activity and magical experience."
The demo shows that the Kinect is suitable for fairly well controlled hand gestures and that those gestures can be incorporated into a sex game. Without being too graphic, it's clear that the game makers imagine that players will be using the Kinect to interact directly with women (for now) in the game.
And Kyle Machulis, who is considered one of the world's experts on sex and digital toys and games, said he's impressed with how quickly the Kinect community has taken the new device and advanced it for adult purposes.
"The Kinect is obviously a natural technology for this kind of usage, since the 'hands-free' approach means that the user's hands are available for other actions, be it manipulating the game, or themselves--or, in this case, possibly both at the same time," Machulis told CNET. "I'm impressed with the quick development turnaround for getting new controls into their engine like this, especially using resources from the open-source community."
However, Machulis said he wasn't sure about whether ThriXXX's Kinect implementation would be kosher under the Kinect's license agreement. "There's been some question about whether you can use the Kinect in commercial projects," he said. "I don't quite understand it myself, since I'm not sure you can [control, through end-user license agreements,] hardware like that, but it's something that needs a nice lawyer response."
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Machulis also pointed out that OpenNI, "an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of natural interaction (NI) devices, applications and middleware," has begun offering its own motion controller (see video below) with open-source drivers. The $199 camera comes, in part, from PrimeSense, which Machulis explained is behind the depth-sensing technology in the Kinect camera.
"The advent of the PrimeSense reference kit could completely assuage fears about using the Kinect for further adult development," Machulis said.
ThriXXX admitted that it doesn't have a green light from Microsoft to move ahead with its Kinect implementation.
"We do not have permission from anyone on any of this stuff, and have been using stuff from the hacker community to do a working prototype, following what [is] going on in that world," Brad Abram, ThriXXX's vice president of business development, said in an e-mail to CNET. And with the OpenNI drivers, we "don't know how [Microsoft] can contain the current activity worldwide. We have no idea how [Microsoft] will react...but we think the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak.
"In regards to commercial games, we do not sell at retail, do not have a need for [game ratings], and everything is done offshore in Europe, where [Microsoft] is being lambasted by the courts for [anticompetitive] behavior. If we have to, maybe we would give it away for free as part of the open-source community efforts, but we don't know yet where any of this will lead."
For his part, Machulis is pleased that the ThiXXX met one of his general goals for the Kinect and sex.
"Note that this [happened] 10 full days before Christmas," Machulis wrote on his blog, "which was my deadline for when we'd see our first public usage of the Kinect in porn."
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between.
December 15, 2010
Kinect sex is here, game company says
Daniel Terdiman
The Kinect, from Microsoft, has been out for less than two months, and already, an adult game company has produced a demo using the motion controller in a 3D sex game.
Kinect sex has arrived, and it took the adult gaming community less than two months to get there.
Just more than two weeks ago, one of the world's leading experts on sex and video games said that while there were not yet working adult games using Microsoft's Kinect motion controller, the potential was there. That barrier has been broken, as one game company illustrates in a demo for a new game.
The demo (a NSFW YouTube video) comes from ThriXXX software, a maker of 3D role-playing sex simulation games, which said in a statement today that "the open-sourcing of device drivers for Kinect have enabled the...device to be used directly from connected PCs operating on Windows 7...The Kinect interface provides another exciting interface option for users of the sex simulation software to control the experience in extraordinary new ways. Controller-free is the next generation of game user interfaces, allowing users to use gestures, spoken commands, or objects to control in-game action that creates a completely new sex game activity and magical experience."
The demo shows that the Kinect is suitable for fairly well controlled hand gestures and that those gestures can be incorporated into a sex game. Without being too graphic, it's clear that the game makers imagine that players will be using the Kinect to interact directly with women (for now) in the game.
And Kyle Machulis, who is considered one of the world's experts on sex and digital toys and games, said he's impressed with how quickly the Kinect community has taken the new device and advanced it for adult purposes.
"The Kinect is obviously a natural technology for this kind of usage, since the 'hands-free' approach means that the user's hands are available for other actions, be it manipulating the game, or themselves--or, in this case, possibly both at the same time," Machulis told CNET. "I'm impressed with the quick development turnaround for getting new controls into their engine like this, especially using resources from the open-source community."
However, Machulis said he wasn't sure about whether ThriXXX's Kinect implementation would be kosher under the Kinect's license agreement. "There's been some question about whether you can use the Kinect in commercial projects," he said. "I don't quite understand it myself, since I'm not sure you can [control, through end-user license agreements,] hardware like that, but it's something that needs a nice lawyer response."
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Machulis also pointed out that OpenNI, "an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of natural interaction (NI) devices, applications and middleware," has begun offering its own motion controller (see video below) with open-source drivers. The $199 camera comes, in part, from PrimeSense, which Machulis explained is behind the depth-sensing technology in the Kinect camera.
"The advent of the PrimeSense reference kit could completely assuage fears about using the Kinect for further adult development," Machulis said.
ThriXXX admitted that it doesn't have a green light from Microsoft to move ahead with its Kinect implementation.
"We do not have permission from anyone on any of this stuff, and have been using stuff from the hacker community to do a working prototype, following what [is] going on in that world," Brad Abram, ThriXXX's vice president of business development, said in an e-mail to CNET. And with the OpenNI drivers, we "don't know how [Microsoft] can contain the current activity worldwide. We have no idea how [Microsoft] will react...but we think the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak.
"In regards to commercial games, we do not sell at retail, do not have a need for [game ratings], and everything is done offshore in Europe, where [Microsoft] is being lambasted by the courts for [anticompetitive] behavior. If we have to, maybe we would give it away for free as part of the open-source community efforts, but we don't know yet where any of this will lead."
For his part, Machulis is pleased that the ThiXXX met one of his general goals for the Kinect and sex.
"Note that this [happened] 10 full days before Christmas," Machulis wrote on his blog, "which was my deadline for when we'd see our first public usage of the Kinect in porn."
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between.
Jesus' Great-Grandmother Identified
http://news.discovery.com/history/jesus-great-grandmother.html
Jesus' Great-Grandmother Identified
Medieval legends suggest that Ismeria, a descendent of the tribe of King David, was the grandmother of the Virgin Mary.
By Jennifer Viegas
Thu Dec 9, 2010
THE GIST
According to medieval manuscripts, the great-grandmother of Jesus was St. Ismeria.
The legend of St. Ismeria emphasizes sanctity earned by a life of penitence as opposed to blood martyrdom.
St. Ismeria likely served as a role model for older women during the 14th and 15th centuries.
The great-grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine medieval manuscripts analyzed by a historian.
The legend of St. Ismeria, presented in the current Journal of Medieval History, sheds light on both the Biblical Virgin Mary's family and also on religious and cultural values of 14th-century Florence.
"I don't think any other woman is mentioned" as Mary's grandmother in the Bible, Catherine Lawless, author of the paper, told Discovery News. "Mary's patrilineal lineage is the only one given."
"Mary herself is mentioned very little in the Bible," added Lawless, a lecturer in history at the University of Limerick. "The huge Marian cult that has evolved over centuries has very few scriptural sources."
Lawless studied the St. Ismeria story, which she said has been "ignored by scholars," in two manuscripts: the 14th century "MS Panciatichiano 40" of Florence's National Central Library and the 15th century "MS 1052" of the Riccardiana Library, also in Florence.
"According to the legend, Ismeria is the daughter of Nabon of the people of Judea, and of the tribe of King David," wrote Lawless. She married "Santo Liseo," who is described as "a patriarch of the people of God." The legend continues that the couple had a daughter named Anne who married Joachim. After 12 years, Liseo died. Relatives then left Ismeria penniless.
"I'm pretty sure one is supposed to believe that it was either her dead husband's relatives or, less likely, her natal family," Lawless said. "The family of the Virgin Mary would not have been cast in such a light."
Ismeria then goes to a hospital where she finds refuge. She is said to perform a miracle, filling a shell with fish to feed all of the hospital's patients. After this miracle she prays to be taken away from the "vainglory of this world."
After God called her to "Paradise," a rector at the hospital informed the Virgin Mary and Jesus of her passing. They departed for the hospital with the 12 Apostles, Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas. There they paid honor to St. Ismeria.
The legend marks a shift in belief, as sanctity was previously more often earned by blood martyrdom rather than piety. Lawless credits that, in part, to the rise in the belief of Purgatory, an interim space between heaven and hell where sins could be purged.
"The more sins purged in one's lifetime (through penitence, good works, etc.) the less time needed in purgatory -- for either oneself or one's family," she said.
She also pointed out that "the great bulk of Christian martyrs of the west died under the Roman persecutions, which ended in the fourth century."
While the author of the Ismeria legend remains unknown, Lawless thinks it could have been a layperson from Tuscany. During the medieval period, "the story may have been used as a model for continent wifehood and active, charitable widowhood in one of the many hospitals of medieval Florence."
"The grandmother of the Virgin was no widow who threatened the patrimony of her children by demanding the return of her dowry, nor did she threaten the family unit by remarrying and starting another lineage," she added. "Instead, her life could be seen as an ideal model for Florentine penitential women."
George Ferzoco, a research fellow at the University of Bristol, commented that the new paper analyzing the legend is "brilliant" and "reveals an exciting trove of religious material from late medieval and renaissance Florence, where many manuscripts were written specifically for females."
"What is so striking about St. Ismeria," Carolyn Muessig of the University of Bristol's Department of Theology and Religious Studies told Discovery News, "is that she is a model for older matrons. Let's face it: Older female role models are hard to come by in any culture."
"But the fact that St. Ismeria came to the fore in late medieval Florence," Muessig concluded, "reveals some of the more positive attitudes that medieval culture had towards the place and the importance of women in society."
Jesus' Great-Grandmother Identified
Medieval legends suggest that Ismeria, a descendent of the tribe of King David, was the grandmother of the Virgin Mary.
By Jennifer Viegas
Thu Dec 9, 2010
THE GIST
According to medieval manuscripts, the great-grandmother of Jesus was St. Ismeria.
The legend of St. Ismeria emphasizes sanctity earned by a life of penitence as opposed to blood martyrdom.
St. Ismeria likely served as a role model for older women during the 14th and 15th centuries.
The great-grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine medieval manuscripts analyzed by a historian.
The legend of St. Ismeria, presented in the current Journal of Medieval History, sheds light on both the Biblical Virgin Mary's family and also on religious and cultural values of 14th-century Florence.
"I don't think any other woman is mentioned" as Mary's grandmother in the Bible, Catherine Lawless, author of the paper, told Discovery News. "Mary's patrilineal lineage is the only one given."
"Mary herself is mentioned very little in the Bible," added Lawless, a lecturer in history at the University of Limerick. "The huge Marian cult that has evolved over centuries has very few scriptural sources."
Lawless studied the St. Ismeria story, which she said has been "ignored by scholars," in two manuscripts: the 14th century "MS Panciatichiano 40" of Florence's National Central Library and the 15th century "MS 1052" of the Riccardiana Library, also in Florence.
"According to the legend, Ismeria is the daughter of Nabon of the people of Judea, and of the tribe of King David," wrote Lawless. She married "Santo Liseo," who is described as "a patriarch of the people of God." The legend continues that the couple had a daughter named Anne who married Joachim. After 12 years, Liseo died. Relatives then left Ismeria penniless.
"I'm pretty sure one is supposed to believe that it was either her dead husband's relatives or, less likely, her natal family," Lawless said. "The family of the Virgin Mary would not have been cast in such a light."
Ismeria then goes to a hospital where she finds refuge. She is said to perform a miracle, filling a shell with fish to feed all of the hospital's patients. After this miracle she prays to be taken away from the "vainglory of this world."
After God called her to "Paradise," a rector at the hospital informed the Virgin Mary and Jesus of her passing. They departed for the hospital with the 12 Apostles, Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas. There they paid honor to St. Ismeria.
The legend marks a shift in belief, as sanctity was previously more often earned by blood martyrdom rather than piety. Lawless credits that, in part, to the rise in the belief of Purgatory, an interim space between heaven and hell where sins could be purged.
"The more sins purged in one's lifetime (through penitence, good works, etc.) the less time needed in purgatory -- for either oneself or one's family," she said.
She also pointed out that "the great bulk of Christian martyrs of the west died under the Roman persecutions, which ended in the fourth century."
While the author of the Ismeria legend remains unknown, Lawless thinks it could have been a layperson from Tuscany. During the medieval period, "the story may have been used as a model for continent wifehood and active, charitable widowhood in one of the many hospitals of medieval Florence."
"The grandmother of the Virgin was no widow who threatened the patrimony of her children by demanding the return of her dowry, nor did she threaten the family unit by remarrying and starting another lineage," she added. "Instead, her life could be seen as an ideal model for Florentine penitential women."
George Ferzoco, a research fellow at the University of Bristol, commented that the new paper analyzing the legend is "brilliant" and "reveals an exciting trove of religious material from late medieval and renaissance Florence, where many manuscripts were written specifically for females."
"What is so striking about St. Ismeria," Carolyn Muessig of the University of Bristol's Department of Theology and Religious Studies told Discovery News, "is that she is a model for older matrons. Let's face it: Older female role models are hard to come by in any culture."
"But the fact that St. Ismeria came to the fore in late medieval Florence," Muessig concluded, "reveals some of the more positive attitudes that medieval culture had towards the place and the importance of women in society."
Wake-Up Call: Top 11 Trends of 2011
Gerald Celente
After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times.
But that is not what we are predicting. Instead, the fruits of government and institutional action and inaction on many fronts will ripen in unplanned-for fashions. Trends we have previously identified, and that have been brewing for some time, will reach maturity in 2011, impacting just about everyone in the world.
1. Wake-Up Call
In 2011, the people of all nations will fully recognize how grave economic conditions have become, how ineffectual and self-serving the so-called solutions have been, and how dire the consequences will be.
Having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all "arbiters of everything" to fulfill their promises, the people will do more than just question authority, they will defy authority. The seeds of revolution will be sown.
2. Crack-Up 2011
Among our Top Trends for last year was the "Crash of 2010." What happened? The stock market didn't crash. We know.
We made it clear in our Autumn Trends Journal that we were not forecasting a stock market crash the equity markets were no longer a legitimate indicator of recovery or the real state of the economy. Yet the reliable indicators (employment numbers, the real estate market, currency pressures, sovereign debt problems) all bordered between crisis and disaster.
In 2011, with the arsenal of schemes to prop them up depleted, we predict "Crack-Up 2011": teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the "Greatest Depression" will be recognized by everyone.
3. Screw the People
As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the "authorities" will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations. While there will be variations on the theme, the governments' song will be the same: cut what you give, raise what you take.
4. Crime Waves
No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. In 2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time. As Gerald Celente says, "When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it."
Hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
5. Crackdown on Liberty
As crime rates rise, so will the voices demanding a crackdown. A national crusade to "Get Tough on Crime" will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the "War on Terror," where "suspected terrorists" are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the "War on Crime" everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
6. Alternative Energy
In laboratories and workshops unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible, working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume.
What are they, and how long will it be before they can be brought to market? Shrewd investors will ignore the "can't be done" skepticism, and examine the newly emerging energy trend opportunities that will come of age in 2011.
7. Journalism 2.0
Though the trend has been in the making since the dawn of the Internet Revolution, 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete.
With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, "Journalism 2.0" has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have the possibility of such far-reaching effects.
8. Cyberwars
Just a decade ago, when the digital age was blooming and hackers were looked upon as annoying geeks, we forecast that the intrinsic fragility of the Internet and the vulnerability of the data it carried made it ripe for cyber-crime and cyber-warfare to flourish.
In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun. The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security.
9. Youth of the World Unite
University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling betrayed and angry, forced to live back at home, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Filled with vigor, rife with passion, but not mature enough to control their impulses, the confrontations they engage in will often escalate disproportionately.
Government efforts to exert control and return the youth to quiet complacency will be ham-fisted and ineffectual. The Revolution will be televised blogged, YouTubed, Twittered and.
10. End of The World!
The closer we get to 2012, the louder the calls will be that the "End is Near!" There have always been sects, at any time in history, that saw signs and portents proving the end of the world was imminent. But 2012 seems to hold a special meaning across a wide segment of "End-time" believers.
Among the Armageddonites, the actual end of the world and annihilation of the Earth in 2012 is a matter of certainty. Even the rational and informed that carefully follow the news of never-ending global crises, may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous state. Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth.
11. The Mystery Trend ... will be revealed upon publication of the Trends Journal in mid-January.
With a 30-year track record to prove it, no one has a more accurate inside scoop on the crucial trends shaping our future than Trends Journal Publisher, Gerald Celente. To schedule an interview with Mr. Celente to discuss these trends before they hit the headlines, contact:
Zeke West
Media Relations
zwest@trendsresearch
845 331.3500 Ext. 1
©MMX The Trends Research Institute®
After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times.
But that is not what we are predicting. Instead, the fruits of government and institutional action and inaction on many fronts will ripen in unplanned-for fashions. Trends we have previously identified, and that have been brewing for some time, will reach maturity in 2011, impacting just about everyone in the world.
1. Wake-Up Call
In 2011, the people of all nations will fully recognize how grave economic conditions have become, how ineffectual and self-serving the so-called solutions have been, and how dire the consequences will be.
Having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all "arbiters of everything" to fulfill their promises, the people will do more than just question authority, they will defy authority. The seeds of revolution will be sown.
2. Crack-Up 2011
Among our Top Trends for last year was the "Crash of 2010." What happened? The stock market didn't crash. We know.
We made it clear in our Autumn Trends Journal that we were not forecasting a stock market crash the equity markets were no longer a legitimate indicator of recovery or the real state of the economy. Yet the reliable indicators (employment numbers, the real estate market, currency pressures, sovereign debt problems) all bordered between crisis and disaster.
In 2011, with the arsenal of schemes to prop them up depleted, we predict "Crack-Up 2011": teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the "Greatest Depression" will be recognized by everyone.
3. Screw the People
As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the "authorities" will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations. While there will be variations on the theme, the governments' song will be the same: cut what you give, raise what you take.
4. Crime Waves
No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. In 2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time. As Gerald Celente says, "When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it."
Hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
5. Crackdown on Liberty
As crime rates rise, so will the voices demanding a crackdown. A national crusade to "Get Tough on Crime" will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the "War on Terror," where "suspected terrorists" are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the "War on Crime" everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
6. Alternative Energy
In laboratories and workshops unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible, working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume.
What are they, and how long will it be before they can be brought to market? Shrewd investors will ignore the "can't be done" skepticism, and examine the newly emerging energy trend opportunities that will come of age in 2011.
7. Journalism 2.0
Though the trend has been in the making since the dawn of the Internet Revolution, 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete.
With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, "Journalism 2.0" has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have the possibility of such far-reaching effects.
8. Cyberwars
Just a decade ago, when the digital age was blooming and hackers were looked upon as annoying geeks, we forecast that the intrinsic fragility of the Internet and the vulnerability of the data it carried made it ripe for cyber-crime and cyber-warfare to flourish.
In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun. The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security.
9. Youth of the World Unite
University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling betrayed and angry, forced to live back at home, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Filled with vigor, rife with passion, but not mature enough to control their impulses, the confrontations they engage in will often escalate disproportionately.
Government efforts to exert control and return the youth to quiet complacency will be ham-fisted and ineffectual. The Revolution will be televised blogged, YouTubed, Twittered and.
10. End of The World!
The closer we get to 2012, the louder the calls will be that the "End is Near!" There have always been sects, at any time in history, that saw signs and portents proving the end of the world was imminent. But 2012 seems to hold a special meaning across a wide segment of "End-time" believers.
Among the Armageddonites, the actual end of the world and annihilation of the Earth in 2012 is a matter of certainty. Even the rational and informed that carefully follow the news of never-ending global crises, may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous state. Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth.
11. The Mystery Trend ... will be revealed upon publication of the Trends Journal in mid-January.
With a 30-year track record to prove it, no one has a more accurate inside scoop on the crucial trends shaping our future than Trends Journal Publisher, Gerald Celente. To schedule an interview with Mr. Celente to discuss these trends before they hit the headlines, contact:
Zeke West
Media Relations
zwest@trendsresearch
845 331.3500 Ext. 1
©MMX The Trends Research Institute®
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