Amesj's Odditorium

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailycaller/...ucheverything#

Poll finds Americans angry about pretty much everything

A new Newsweek/Daily Beast poll finds that Americans are angry about…pretty much everything. From President Obama to congressional Republicans to even God (who has a 33 percent approval rating), everyone needs to watch out for an angry mob coming their way.

Unemployment is at 9.1 percent, gas and grocery prices are skyrocketing, the housing market is in the dumps, and people aren’t happy. Three quarters of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and 81 percent say the job market is not where it needs to be. Half of respondents don’t think Obama has a plan to balance the budget, and 58 percent think Republicans aren’t doing their part to balance the budget either.

The poll finds that Americans are being affected by their anger in other parts of life as well. Fifty-six percent are so angry that they can’t even sleep and 13 percent say the anxiety has affected their sex life. Twenty-six percent of married respondents claim the country’s economic problems have affected their marriage, with more than half of those people saying it has made their marriage worse.

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Add this to places I want to go to:

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/p...-mount-roraima



Mount Roraima is the highest of the Pakaraima mountain chain in South America. The 31 square kilometer summit area is defined by 400 meter tall cliffs on all sides and includes the borders of Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana. The tabletop mountains of the Pakaraima’s are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth, dating back to some two billion years ago.

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Have any of you guys heard of 'the game'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28mind_game%29#

The Game is a mental game where the objective is to avoid thinking about The Game itself. Thinking about The Game constitutes a loss, which, according to the rules of The Game, must be announced each time it occurs. It is impossible to win most versions of The Game; players can only attempt to avoid losing for as long as they possibly can. The Game has been variously described as pointless and infuriating, or as challenging and fun to play.[1] As of 2010, The Game is played by millions worldwide.[1][2][3][4][5]

Is this the secret solution to our problems in the world?

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Facebook loses 6M U.S. users in May
from BLACKLISTEDNEWS.COM
Facebook may continue to gain users, but the world’s biggest social network isn’t gaining them as quickly as it has been and is actually losing users in the U.S.

Facebook gained 11.8 million more users last month alone, according to a study by Inside Facebook. While that’s a lot of new users, it’s less than the 13.9 million new users who joined the site in April, or the 20 million gain during some months in the past year.

And while Inside Facebook reports that the social network is approaching 700 million users worldwide, the number of U.S. users has dropped. The study found that Facebook lost 6 million U.S. users in May.

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http://www.gizmag.com/thermally-acti...te-heat/18902/

'Thermally activated cooling system' puts waste heat to use




Automobiles, appliances, power plants, factories and electrical utilities all waste one thing: heat. More specifically, they produce heat as a by-product of their normal operations, but that heat is just dispersed into the air instead of being put to use. Researchers from Oregon State University, however, have created a prototype system that harnesses waste heat to (rather ironically) cool the device that's creating the heat in the first place. While it isn't the first system to do so, it is claimed to be unusually efficient ... and, it can generate electricity.

The "thermally activated cooling system" combines two systems that have previously been used for the harnessing and dispersion of waste heat - a vapor compression cycle and an organic Rankine cycle.

A vapor compression cycle is what's at work in a refrigerator. It incorporates a recirculating liquid refrigerant, that (in this case) travels through microchannel heat exchangers, absorbing and carrying heat away from hot surfaces, to be released elsewhere.

An organic Rankine cycle, on the other hand, utilizes an organic liquid with a lower liquid-vapor phase change point than that of water. This means that it doesn't take as high a temperature to get it to boil, and once it boils, it can generate electricity.

By combining the two cycles, heat is both drawn away, and put to work powering cooling systems. The prototype at OSU has already been shown to be capable of turning 80 percent of every kilowatt of waste heat into one kilowatt of cooling capability.

When it comes to pure electricity production, the thermally activated cooling system isn't quite as impressive, coming out at 15-20 percent efficiency. Not great, admit the researchers, but still considerably better than nothing.

They envision the system being used to cool electronics, factories, alternative energy systems, and perhaps even to use the heat from hybrid cars' combustion engines to charge their batteries.

The research was recently published in the journal Applied Thermal Engineering.

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http://dornob.com/see-through-concre...mitting-walls/



You might remember this wonderful innovation from Litracon® – translucent concrete – from its days as a prototype with small (paid) samples available to interested architects. Now, however, it has begun to be deployed in real-life buildings.

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New Zealand police catch drink-driving family
from Nothing To Do With Arbroath by arbroath
1 person liked this
It must have set a record, but it's one a South Canterbury family would surely much rather not have, after three of them were booked for drink-driving on the same night.

The saga began at about 12.15am on Saturday when a 15-year-old boy was stopped and arrested for drink-driving on State Highway 1 near Pareora. He blew 529 micrograms per litre of breath, more than three and a half times the youth limit.



The teenager was taken to the Timaru police station for processing, where his mother was called to collect him. She was subsequently stopped and arrested for drink-driving on Craigie Ave at about 2.14am, after blowing 776 mcg, nearly twice the adult limit of 400.

But it wasn't over there. The woman then rang her partner to come and pick them both up. He was stopped and arrested on North St at about 3am, when he blew 559mcg.

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http://www.disinfo.com/2011/06/conne...na-possession/

When is our large neighbor to the west going to figure this one out? Sorry New Yorkers … but hopefully we are on the road to legalization in Connecticut. Daniela Altimari writes in the Hartford Courant:

After a lengthy debate, the state House of Representatives gave final legislative approval to a bill that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The vote was 90 to 57 in favor and came after a spirited discussion that stretched on for nearly five hours.

The bill now goes to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who immediately hailed its passage and pledged to sign it when it reaches his desk.

“Final approval of this legislation accepts the reality that the current law does more harm than good — both in the impact it has on people’s lives and the burden it places on police, prosecutors and probation officers of the criminal justice system,” Malloy said in a statement emailed to reporters moments after the vote was tallied.

“Let me make it clear — we are not legalizing the use of marijuana. In modifying this law, we are recognizing that the punishment should fit the crime, and acknowledging the effects of its application. There is no question that the state’s criminal justice resources could be more effectively utilized for convicting, incarcerating and supervising violent and more serious offenders,” Malloy said.

Read More in the Hartford Courant

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http://www.dangerousminds.net/commen..._were_screwed/

Apocalypse Now: Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham thinks we’re screwed

Today, via the often quirky Business Insider website, I came across an alarming presentation from Jeremy Grantham. Does his name ring a bell? Jeremy Grantham is a co-founder and the Chief Investment Strategist of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO), an asset management firm with more than $108 billion dollars in assets under their care. It’s one of the largest asset management firms in the world.

Grantham is noted for his prediction of various bubbles in asset classes and his knack for seeing which direction the market is moving in. Lately he’s turned very, very bearish. Now, Grantham’s insisting: “We’re headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.”

Summary of the Summary
The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.

Summary
Until about 1800, our species had no safety margin and lived, like other animals, up to the limit of the food supply, ebbing and flowing in population.
From about 1800 on the use of hydrocarbons allowed for an explosion in energy use, in food supply, and, through the creation of surpluses, a dramatic increase in wealth and scientific progress.
Since 1800, the population has surged from 800 million to 7 billion, on its way to an estimated 8 billion, at minimum.
The rise in population, the ten-fold increase in wealth in developed countries, and the current explosive growth in developing countries have eaten rapidly into our finite resources of hydrocarbons and metals, fertilizer, available land, and water.
Now, despite a massive increase in fertilizer use, the growth in crop yields per acre has declined from 3.5% in the 1960s to 1.2% today. There is little productive new land to bring on and, as people get richer, they eat more grain-intensive meat. Because the population continues to grow at over 1%, there is little safety margin.
The problems of compounding growth in the face of finite resources are not easily understood by optimistic, short-term-oriented, and relatively innumerate humans (especially the political variety).
The fact is that no compound growth is sustainable. If we maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything and crash. We must substitute qualitative growth for quantitative growth.
But Mrs. Market is helping, and right now she is sending us the Mother of all price signals. The prices of all important commodities except oil declined for 100 years until 2002, by an average of 70%. From 2002 until now, this entire decline was erased by a bigger price surge than occurred during World War II.
Statistically, most commodities are now so far away from their former downward trend that it makes it very probable that the old trend has changed – that there is in fact a Paradigm Shift – perhaps the most important economic event since the Industrial Revolution.
Climate change is associated with weather instability, but the last year was exceptionally bad. Near term it will surely get less bad.
Excellent long-term investment opportunities in resources and resource efficiency are compromised by the high chance of an improvement in weather next year and by the possibility that China may stumble.
From now on, price pressure and shortages of resources will be a permanent feature of our lives. This will increasingly slow down the growth rate of the developed and developing world and put a severe burden on poor countries.
We all need to develop serious resource plans, particularly energy policies. There is little time to waste.

You can go through the entire presentation at Business Insider. His charts show long, long term patterns and trends. Numbers don’t lie. There is very definitely a cause for concern. I’d very very curious what the Freakonomics guys had to say about this…

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http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/10/369...-officers.html

Angry crows dive-bomb officers in Everett, Wash.
Share
The Associated Press
Published: Friday, Jun. 10, 2011 - 10:28 am
Last Modified: Friday, Jun. 10, 2011 - 11:59 am

EVERETT, Wash. -- Officers at a Seattle-area police department have found themselves in a flap with some unusual suspects: an angry flock of birds.

Crows have been attacking police in the parking lot of an Everett Police Department precinct station. They've been swooping down and dive-bombing the officers as they walk to and from their cars.

Lt. Bob Johns said he recently was flanked by the aggressive birds and "got zinged."

"They're like velociraptors," Johns said.

One officer used his siren to try to scare away the crows, but it didn't work. The birds responded by decorating his car with droppings, The Daily Herald reported.

State Fish and Wildlife Department biologist Ruth Milner said the birds are simply protecting baby crows that have been kicked out of the nest and are learning to fly. Adult crows are quite protective of their young - a common trait among larger birds and birds of prey.

"All they're doing is defending their nest," Milner said.

She noted crows also can recognize people's individual features. And they hold grudges.

"If your cops have done something that (the crows) perceive as a threat, they could be keying in on them because they're all wearing the same kind of uniform," Milner said.

In addition to the officers, at least a dozen city employees have encountered the angry crows, and some have complained about being attacked, city spokeswoman Kate Reardon said. But she said police and city workers have agreed to let the crows be, and wait out the aggression.

She said the employees will be cautious but can use umbrellas to defend themselves if need be.

Everett is about 25 miles north of Seattle.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/10/369...#ixzz1PFyrjR73

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Are we on the verge of the science-fiction Holy Grail? Researchers 'one step closer' to finding out why matter dominates the universe

Researchers are today one step closer to understanding why matter and not anti-matter dominates the universe.

An international team working in Japan has discovered that three of the most basic particles in existence can ‘flip’ into each other.

The research is only preliminary as it was halted by the ***ushima earthquake, but if proved correct will be a breakthrough in understanding the cosmos.

Previous experiments had observed two kinds of ‘flipping’, where the neutrinos suddenly turn into each other, but now T2K has identified a third.

This involved a muon neutrino turning into an electron neutrino, the first time such a transformation had been recorded.

It raises the possibility that neutrinos - and matter in general - have different qualities to them than anti-neutrinos.

Such differences may one day help explain why it is matter which makes up our universe and not anti-matter.

Neutrinos caught 'shape shifting' in new way

Neutrinos have been caught spontaneously flip-flopping from one type to another in a way never previously seen. Further observations of this behaviour may shed light on how matter came to dominate over antimatter in the universe.

Neutrinos are among the most slippery particles known to physics. They rarely interact with ordinary matter, but massive experiments have been set up to detect the flashes of light produced when they do.

There are three known types, or flavours, of neutrino: electron, muon, and tau. Several experiments have found evidence that some flavours can spontaneously change into others, a phenomenon called neutrino oscillations. For example muon neutrinos can change into tau neutrinos.

Now, results from a Japanese experiment called T2K have tentatively added a new kind of transformation to the list of allowed types – the metamorphosis of muon neutrinos into electron neutrinos.

T2K generates muon neutrinos at the J-PARC accelerator in Tokai, Japan, and sends them in a beam towards the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in Kamioka, 295 kilometres away. It began operating in February 2010 and stopped gathering data in March, when Japan was rocked by the magnitude-9 megaquakeMovie Camera.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...75F6W120110616

(Reuters) - A monster black hole shredded a Sun-like star, producing a strangely long-lasting flash of gamma rays that probably won't be seen again in a million years, astronomers reported on Thursday.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news...-of-star-birth

Hubble spies a firestorm of star birth

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http://www.forteantimes.com/stranged..._and_mj12.html

Marilyn and MJ12
Kennedy, Monroe and the mind-control memo

I know there hasn’t been much glamour in this column, but how about Marilyn Monroe, JFK and UFOs? The Daily Mail revived this one on 19 April with “Was JFK killed because of his interest in aliens? Secret memo shows presid­ent demanded UFO files 10 days before his death”. JFK was proposing joint Soviet-American space exploration (in 1963!)[1] and, though the memo’s intent isn’t entirely clear, he seems to have been asking the CIA to review their UFO files in the hope of providing information about the ‘unknowns’ – presumably unidentified sightings – to persuade the Soviets that the UFOs they were seeing were not US espionage devices: “It is import­ant that we make a clear distinction between the knowns and unknowns in the event the Soviets try to mistake our extended cooperation as a cover for intelligence gathering of their defense and space programs.”

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http://elluminati.blogspot.com/2011/...p-started.html

How IBM Technology Jump Started the Holocaust

The Nazis' persecution of Jews was brutal, methodical, and horrifyingly efficient. However, their perverse efforts were only realized with the assistance of a Hollerith Machine - IBM's custom-built tabulation system. IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black explains.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/...rss&nsref=tech

Spies can send messages hidden in a Google search

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http://www.disinfo.com/2011/06/toxin...nadians-blood/

Toxin From Genetically Modified Crops Detected In Canadians’ Blood

Until now, scientists and multinational corporations promoting GM crops have maintained that Bt toxin poses no danger to human health as the protein breaks down in the human gut. But the presence of this toxin in human blood shows that this does not happen.

Eating GM corn, soy, and potatoes is perfectly safe, provided you don’t mind having a powerful toxin swirling in your bloodstream. Oh, and your unborn baby’s bloodstream as well. So says a debbie-downer peer-reviewed Canadian study, India Today reports:

Fresh doubts have arisen about the safety of genetically modified crops, with a new study reporting presence of Bt toxin, used widely in GM crops, in human blood for the first time.

Scientists from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, have detected the insecticidal protein, Cry1Ab, circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women. They have also detected the toxin in fetal blood, implying it could pass on to the next generation. The research paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Reproductive Toxicology.

They were all consuming typical Canadian diet that included GM foods such as soybeans, corn and potatoes. Blood samples were taken before delivery for pregnant women and at tubal ligation for non-pregnant women. Umbilical cord blood sampling was done after birth.

Cry1Ab toxin was detected in 93 per cent and 80 per cent of maternal and fetal blood samples, respectively and in 69 per cent of tested blood samples from non-pregnant women.

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http://technoccult.net/archives/2011...nd-miserable/#

Commuting is Making Us Fat and Miserable

People who commute more than 45 minutes a day are more likely to get divorced, according to a Swedish study. And that’s just one of many studies indicating that commuting ruins lives that Slate’s Annie Lowrey shares in a recent story on the subject. “The joy of living in a big, exurban house, or that extra income leftover from your cheap rent? It is almost certainly not worth it,” she writes.

Long commutes are associated with neck and back pain, high levels of stress, obesity and a high level of dissatisfaction with one’s life and work.

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A huge waterspout — a tornado of water — darts down from the sky and appears to strike a huge cruise ship. The towering torrent of water stretched over 300 foot from the heavens — and whipped up ferocious waves around it for two hours. Luckily for passengers onboard the nearby ship, the powerful tornado of water struck just a hundred metres in front — creating the illusion that it was a direct hit. Stormchaser Daniel Pavlinovic captured the stunning shots from the safety of dry land in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Picture: DANIEL PAVLINOVIC / CATERS NEWS

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http://www.disinfo.com/2011/06/how-t...bby-in-tandem/

How The Top 10 Military Contractors Lobby In Tandem

Posted by JacobSloan on June 16, 2011

Irregular Times discovers the beautiful geometry of evil cronyism:

Tightly connected. Massively funded. Working for war. This is what the peace movements are up against. Together, the top ten federal contractors, all working for the military, received $138.4 Billion in taxpayer funds through federal contracts during fiscal year 2010. In the first three months of 2011 alone, these ten corporations paid for the services of no fewer than 109 different lobbying firms, deployed to Capitol Hill along with their own in-house corporate lobbyists. A line is drawn between any two military contractors if they both hired the services of at least one lobbying firm in common; the number indicates the number of lobbying firms hired in common:

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I had just learned about about Fort Calhoun, I had just read that this morning in an alex jones posting. In that link, I picked up another story on large cracks suddenly forming in the earth:

#7 All over the world, huge cracks are appearing for no discernible reason. For example, a massive crack that is approximately 3 kilometers long recent appeared in southern Peru. Also, a 500 foot long crack suddenly appeared recently in the state of Michigan. When you also throw in all of the gigantic sinkholes that have been opening all over the world, it is easy to conclude that the planet is becoming very unstable.

From one of the above links:

Scientists are sounding the alarm: the mysterious cracks appear across the planet

Scientists do not know what to think about: South America is bursting at the seams. In southern Peru, suddenly appeared a huge crack length of 3 km and a width of about 100 meters.

Anomaly occurred in the district Huakullani Chukuito province near the famous Lake Titicaca. A crack has appeared almost immediately: the earth like a burst at the site of a large tension, the far scattered huge chunks of soil.

Interestingly, the crack did not appear in the earthquake. In general, there was no catastrophe, the earth simply gone. The crack occurred on level ground and is not associated with any disasters. Scientists are confused with this fact. Cracks also appear in neighboring Bolivia. And not so long ago, the crack happened in Africa – Ethiopia. Maybe these phenomena is common nature: the continents literally split in front of mankind.

Further reading:

Recommended readings:
Large Crack Opens in the Earth in Southern Peru (SoTT)
Giant crack in Africa formed in just days (NewScientist)
Iceland Lake Disappearing Into New Crack in Earth (National Geographic)
ESA’s Envisat satellite witnesses Earth’s largest crack (ESA News)
Deepest crack on earth found in the Caribbean (CNN)
Trinco Earth Crack: No stepping (LankaPuvath)
A Crack Opens in the Ethiopian Landscape, Preparing the Way for a New Sea (DiscoverMagazine)
Tremors Point to a Stressed-Out Stretch of the San Andrea Fault (Discover Magazine)
Earth crack a mistery (EHExtra)
500 foot crack in the earth appears in Michigan, US (FromTheOld)

Oh yeah:

Giant crack in Africa formed in just days

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...just-days.html

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5.0 out of 5 stars pure awesome, December 7, 2008
By
Daniel Mauro
This review is from: Stanley FatMax Xtreme 55-120 FuBar III (Tools & Home Improvement)
i was surfing the web one day when i came across this glorious tool. i knew immediately that i had to have one. i waited a few days, calling around to local hardware stores to see if they carried it. unfortunately i could only find its smaller brothers. they were not for me, i needed the full size tool of destruction. so i looked online and amazon had the best price (plus i got free shipping!!!). i bought it and it arrived. i took it out and checked it out. pure awesomeness. i took it around with me. showed everyone i knew. they were all jealous of me for having something so awesome.

my buddy calls me one day and asks me to come over and help him take down the shed out behind his house. i go over there, fubar in hand, and i start destroying the thing. there is nothing so satisfying, as smashing things up. and this is definitely the tool to do it. i had half the thing down before my friend even got started.

i give this thing 5 stars. because it does exactly what its supposed to do. and it is perfect at what it does. so whether you're looking to demolish something...or you're getting weapons togeather for the zombie appocalypse...this tool is for you.


http://www.amazon.com/review/R30B600...R30B60093AGTDF

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ies-buy-bombs#

Eisenhower's worst fears came true. We invent enemies to buy the bombs

Britain faces no serious threat, yet keeps waging war. While big defence exists, glory-hungry politicians will use it