Facebook flooded with complaints after messages 'bug' - bug 'reveals private messages'... -

Facebook flooded with complaints after messages 'bug' -  bug 'reveals private messages'... - 

Facebook has denied claims that a software bug caused private messages dating from 2009 to be displayed on profiles overnight, insisting that the messages were left in public originally, but that members have since become more privacy-conscious.


The social network was deluged with complaints from members who claimed their old private messages have been re-published publicly on the social network.
Facebook admitted old messages were reappearing on profiles but quickly denied that there had been a privacy breach, as the messages were old public messages.
It appeared that members were shown old public "wall" postings that they wrongly believed were private messages. Observers said the outcry showed how the way people use Facebook has changed, as they have become more aware of their privacy online.
Facebook’s director of engineering, Andrew Bosworth, aimed to calm the panic.
"In case there was any concern, these are just wall posts and not personal messages… people just forget how we used to use the wall!," he said.

Read more -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9563855/Facebook-flooded-with-complaints-after-messages-bug.html

Scientists find the secret of longer life for Men (the bad news: Castration is the key) -

Scientists find the secret of longer life for Men (the bad news: Castration is the key) - 



Scientists have found a sure-fire way for men to live longer - but most red-blooded males will find the method unpalatably painful. 
Researchers in Korea have shown that eunuchs - castrated men living centuries ago - outlived other men by a significant margin. 
They say their findings suggest that male sex hormones are responsible for shortening the lives of men.


The evidence comes after careful study of genealogy records of noble members of the Imperial court of the Korean Chosun dynasty (AD 1392-1910).
Kyung-Jin Min, of Inha University, said: 'This discovery adds an important clue for understanding why there is a difference in the expected life span between men and women.'
The castrated boys in Korea lost their reproductive organs in accidents - usually after being bitten by dogs - or underwent castration purposefully to gain early access to the palace. 
Eunuchs were allowed to marry and had families by adopting castrated boys or normal girls.
People in those days kept careful genealogy records as proof that they were of the noble class.


By poring over those records, Min and his colleague Cheol-Koo Lee, of Korea University, found that eunuchs lived 14 to 19 years longer than other men did. 
Amongst the 81 eunuchs they studied, three lived to the ripe old age of 100 or more, a feat of longevity that remains relatively rare even in developed countries today.
They noted the incidence of centenarians among Korean eunuchs is at least 130 times greater than it is in the developed countries, and that can’t be explained simply by the benefits of life in the palace, either. 
They said most eunuchs spent as much time outside the palace as they did inside it. 
And, in fact, kings and male members of the royal family had the shortest lives of all, typically surviving only to their mid-forties.
The research team, whose findings were published in the journal Current Biology, said their findings may offer some clues to life extension.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2207981/Scientists-secret-living-life-men-bad-news-Castration-key.html

19 Signs That America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Giant Surveillance Grid -

19 Signs That America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Giant Surveillance Grid - 



You are being watched.  The control freaks that hold power in the United States have become absolutely obsessed with surveillance.  They are constantly attempting to convince the American people that we are all "safer" when virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and recorded.  Our country is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid far more comprehensive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of.  If you still believe that there is such a thing as "privacy" in this day and age, you are being delusional.  Every single piece of electronic communication is monitored and stored.  In fact, they know that you are reading this article right now.  But even if you got rid of all of your electronic devices, you would still be constantly monitored.  As you will read about below, a rapidly growing nationwide network of facial recognition cameras, "pre-crime" surveillance devices, voice recorders, mobile backscatter vans, aerial drones and automated license plate readers are constantly feeding data about us back to the government.  In addition, private companies involved in "data mining" are gathering literally trillions upon trillions of data points about individual Americans each year.  So there is no escape from this surveillance grid.  In fact, it has become just about impossible to keep it from growing.  The surveillance grid is expanding in thousands of different ways, so even if you stopped one form of surveillance you would hardly make a dent in the astounding growth of this system.  What we desperately need is a fundamental cultural awakening to the importance of liberty, freedom and privacy.  Without such an awakening, the United States (along with the rest of the planet) is going to head into a world that will make "1984" by George Orwell look like a cheery story about a Sunday picnic.

The following are 19 signs that America is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid....

#1 New Software That Will Store And Analyze Millions Of Our Voices

Did you know that there is software that can positively identify you using your voice in just a matter of seconds?

Law enforcement authorities all over the U.S. are very eager to begin using new Russian software that will enable them to store and analyze millions of voices....

‘Voice Grid Nation’ is a system that uses advanced algorithms to match identities to voices. Brought to the US by Russia’s Speech Technology Center, it claims to be capable of allowing police, federal agencies and other law enforcement personnel to build up a huge database containing up to several million voices.

When authorities intercept a call they’ve deemed ‘hinky’, the recording is entered into the VoiceGrid program, which (probably) buzzes and whirrs and spits out a match. In five seconds, the program can scan through 10,000 voices, and it only needs 3 seconds for speech analysis. All that, combined with 100 simultaneous searches and the storage capacity of 2 million samples, gives SpeechPro, as the company is known in the US, the right to claim a 90% success rate.

#2 Unmanned Aerial Drones Will Be Used Inside The U.S. To Spy On You

Unmanned aerial drones have been used with great success by the U.S. military overseas, and now the U.S. government is promoting their use to local law enforcement authorities all over America.

The following is from a recent GAO report....

"Domestically, state and local law enforcement entities represent the greatest potential users of small UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] in the near term because they can offer a simple and cost effective solution for airborne law enforcement activities"

That report also discussed how there are 146 different models of these drones made by 69 different companies throughout the United States....

"According to an industry trade group, local law enforcement can potentially choose from about 146 different types of small UAS being manufactured by about 69 different companies in the U.S."

Since our overseas wars are slowing down, somebody has got to keep these drone companies in business.

So the goal is to eventually have thousands of these drones spying on all of us.

In the years ahead, our skies will likely be filled with these things.  Many of them are incredibly quiet and can gather information about you from far above.  In fact, one could be directly over your home right now and you may never even know it.

In fact, the U.S. government is already using some of these unmanned drones to quietly spy on farmers in Nebraska and Iowa according to a recent article by Kurt Nimmo....

Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is using aerial drones to spy on farmers in Nebraska and Iowa. The surveillance came under scrutiny last week when Nebraska’s congressional delegation sent a joint letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

On Friday, EPA officialdom in “Region 7” responded to the letter.

“Courts, including the Supreme Court, have found similar types of flights to be legal (for example to take aerial photographs of a chemical manufacturing facility) and EPA would use such flights in appropriate instances to protect people and the environment from violations of the Clean Water Act,” the agency said in response to the letter.

#3 High Tech Government Scanners That Can Secretly Scan You From 164 Feet Away

A new scanner that has just been developed can scan your body, your clothes and your luggage from 164 feet away.

According to Gizmodo, these very creepy scanners will soon be used at airports and border crossings all over America....

Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.

And without you knowing it.

The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded "in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress." According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.

Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States.

#4 The DNA Of Newborn Babies Born All Over The United States Is Systematically Collected

These days, the invasion of our privacy begins just after birth.

Did you know that the DNA of almost every newborn baby in the United States is systematically collected and stored in databases?  Unfortunately, most new parents don't even realize what medical personnel are doing when this takes place....

The DNA of virtually every newborn in the United States is collected and tested soon after birth. There are some good reasons for this testing, but it also raises serious privacy concerns that parents should know about.

States require hospitals to screen newborns for certain genetic and other disorders. Many states view the testing as so important they do not require medical personnel to get parents’ express permission before carrying it out. To collect the DNA sample, medical personnel prick the newborn’s heel and place a few drops of blood on a card. There is one question that new parents rarely ask: What happens to the blood spots after the testing is done? This is where newborn screening becomes problematic.

#5 Twitter Is Being Used To Monitor You

Hopefully you understand by now that nothing you do on the Internet will ever be private again.

According to a recent article by Susanne Posel, Twitter is being used as a law enforcement tool more than it ever has been before....

Twitter has released a report confirming that the US government leads the world in requesting information on their citizens. The Transparency Report shows the US government has made requests that are infringing on American privacy rights. Twitter states that "we’ve received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011."

#6 Your Cell Phone Is Spying On You

If you want to have no privacy whatsoever, own a cell phone and carry it around with you constantly.

Your cell phone is constantly tracking everywhere that you go and it is constantly making a record of everything that you do with it.

For example, did you know that authorities are using cell phones to record the identities of people that attend street protests?

The following is what one private investigator recently told a stunned audience....

One of the biggest changes is the ability to track your physical location. I'm sorry I came in at the end of the previous talk. I heard them talk about surveying cell phones with a drone, in a wide area -- this is something that is done routinely now. I can tell you that everybody that attended an Occupy Wall Street protest, and didn't turn their cell phone off, or put it -- and sometimes even if they did -- the identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID'd, whether an informant pointed them out, it's known they were there anyway. This is routine.

At this point, law enforcement authorities are requesting information from cell phone companies about individual Americans over a million times a year as a recent Wired article detailed....

Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data, according to data provided to Congress.

#7 Students Are Increasingly Being Tracked By RFID Microchips

RFID microchips are increasingly becoming a part of our every day lives.  In fact, some school districts are now using them to track school attendance.  Just check out what is happening in one school district down in Texas....

Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.

District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.

#8 Spy Cams In Hospitals To Monitor Handwashing

Would you want a surveillance camera watching you in the restroom?

Don't laugh - this is actually happening in some places.  The following is from a recent Natural News article....

Here goes the last great American sanctuary from intrusion- bathrooms with spy cams. Going to the bathroom has now been monitored in a hospital in NY where sensors were placed on the doors to identify workers entering and exiting and cameras placed to view sinks to insure proper hand hygiene.

#9 Spyware That Monitors The Behavior Of Government Workers

According to the Washington Post, the federal government is now actually using advanced spyware to closely monitor the behavior of some government employees while they are at work....

When the Food and Drug Administration started spying on a group of agency scientists, it installed monitoring software on their laptop computers to capture their communications.

The software, sold by SpectorSoft of Vero Beach, Fla., could do more than vacuum up the scientists’ e-mails as they complained to lawmakers and others about medical devices they thought were dangerous. It could be programmed to intercept a tweet or Facebook post. It could snap screen shots of their computers. It could even track an employee’s keystrokes, retrieve files from hard drives or search for keywords.

#10 The NSA Warrantless Surveillance Programs

Virtually every single electronic communication in the world (including all phone calls, all faxes, and all emails) is intercepted and recorded by an international surveillance network run by the NSA and several other large international intelligence agencies.

For a long time this was an "open secret" that everyone kind of knew about but that nobody ever did anything about.

Fortunately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is now fighting back, and they have three former NSA employees on their side....

Three whistleblowers – all former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) – have come forward to give evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against the government's illegal mass surveillance program, Jewel v. NSA.

In a motion filed today, the three former intelligence analysts confirm that the NSA has, or is in the process of obtaining, the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers, such as the "secret room" at the AT&T facility in San Francisco first disclosed by retired AT&T technician Mark Klein in early 2006.

"For years, government lawyers have been arguing that our case is too secret for the courts to consider, despite the mounting confirmation of widespread mass illegal surveillance of ordinary people," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We're extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program."

According to one of the whistleblowers, the NSA "has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email."

#11 Pre-Crime Surveillance Technology

Did you think that "pre-crime" was just something for science fiction movies?

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.  A company known as BRS Labs has developed "pre-crime surveillance cameras" that they claim can identify potential terrorists and criminals even before they strike.

Yes, this sounds like a bunch of nonsense, but some law enforcement authorities are taking this quite seriously.  In fact, dozens of these "pre-crime surveillance cameras" are being put up at major transportation hubs all over San Francisco....

In its latest project BRS Labs is to install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which includes buses, trams and subways.

The company says will put them in 12 stations with up to 22 cameras in each, bringing the total number to 288.

The cameras will be able to track up to 150 people at a time in real time and will gradually build up a ‘memory’ of suspicious behaviour to work out what is suspicious.

#12 Mobile Backscatter Vans

Do you think that you can get away from the TSA scanners by simply refusing to fly and by avoiding all U.S. airports?

Don't be so sure.

In fact, law enforcement authorities all over the country will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same backscatter technology currently being used by the TSA at U.S. airports....

American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering's Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call "the amazing radioactive genital viewer," now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).

These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America's streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don't worry, it's not a violation of privacy. As AS&E's vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, "From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be."

#13 Automated License Plate Readers

In a previous article, I discussed a Washington Post article that detailed how automated license plate readers are now being used to track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington D.C. to the time that it leaves....

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

#14 Data Mining

Private companies are almost more eager to invade your privacy than the government is.

In fact, there are a whole bunch of very large corporations that are making a fortune by gathering every shred of information about you that they possibly can and selling that information for profit.  It is called "data mining", and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.

One of the largest data mining companies is known as Acxiom.  That firm has actually compiled information on more than 190 million people in the United States alone....

The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data 'transactions' a year.

#15 The Growing Use Of Facial Recognition Technology

Most Americans do not realize this, but the use of facial recognition technology has absolutely exploded in recent years.

For example, did you know that there are now 32 states that use some type of facial recognition technology for DMV photos?

That is why they give you such strict instructions when you get your DMV photo taken.  They want your photo to be able to work with the database.

But the government is not the only one using creepy facial recognition technology.  The following is from a recent article by Naomi Wolf....

A software engineer in my Facebook community wrote recently about his outrage that when he visited Disneyland, and went on a ride, the theme park offered him the photo of himself and his girlfriend to buy – with his credit card information already linked to it. He noted that he had never entered his name or information into anything at the theme park, or indicated that he wanted a photo, or alerted the humans at the ride to who he and his girlfriend were – so, he said, based on his professional experience, the system had to be using facial recognition technology. He had never signed an agreement allowing them to do so, and he declared that this use was illegal. He also claimed that Disney had recently shared data from facial-recognition technology with the United States military.

Yes, I know: it sounds like a paranoid rant.

Except that it turned out to be true. News21, supported by the Carnegie and Knight foundations, reports that Disney sites are indeed controlled by face-recognition technology, that the military is interested in the technology, and that the face-recognition contractor, Identix, has contracts with the US government – for technology that identifies individuals in a crowd.

#16 Rapid DNA Testing

But what law enforcement authorities like even better than facial recognition technology is DNA testing.

The following is from a recent article by Ellen Messmer....

It's been the FBI's dream for years -- to do near-instant DNA analysis using mobile equipment in the field -- and now "Rapid DNA" gear is finally here.

The idea is that you simply drop into the system a cotton swab with a person's saliva, for example, and the "Rapid DNA" machine spits out the type of DNA data that's needed to pin down identity. Now that such equipment exists, the FBI is pushing to get it into the hands of law enforcement agencies as soon as possible.

#17 The FBI's Next Generation Identification System

It was recently announced that the FBI is spending a billion dollars to develop a "Next Generation Identification System" that will combine the most advanced biometric identification technologies to create a database superior to anything that law enforcement in the United States has ever had before....

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun rolling out its new $1 billion biometric Next Generation Identification (NGI) system. In essence, NGI is a nationwide database of mugshots, iris scans, DNA records, voice samples, and other biometrics, that will help the FBI identify and catch criminals — but it is how this biometric data is captured, through a nationwide network of cameras and photo databases, that is raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates.

Until now, the FBI relied on IAFIS, a national fingerprint database that has long been due an overhaul. Over the last few months, the FBI has been pilot testing a facial recognition system — and soon, detectives will also be able to search the system for other biometrics such as DNA records and iris scans.

#18 The NYPD's Domain Awareness System

Local law enforcement agencies around the country are also spending big bucks to upgrade their surveillance capabilities.  The new "Domain Awareness System" that the NYPD just put in was described in a recent article by Neal Ungerleider....

The New York Police Department is embracing online surveillance in a wide-eyed way. Representatives from Microsoft and the NYPD announced the launch of their new Domain Awareness System (DAS) at a lower Manhattan press conference today. Using DAS, police are able to monitor thousands of CCTV cameras around the five boroughs, scan license plates, find out the kind of radiation cars are emitting, and extrapolate info on criminal and terrorism suspects from dozens of criminal databases ... all in near-real time.

But don't think that you are getting off the hook if you don't live in New York City.  The truth is that Microsoft has big plans for putting in these kinds of systems nationwide.

#19 Trapwire

Did you know that a huge network of incredibly advanced spy cameras is currently being installed nationwide?

Yes, I know that it sounds like something off of a television show, but this is actually true.  It is called "Trapwire", and I described this emerging system in one of my recent articles....

"You are being watched.  The government has a secret system - a machine - that spies on you every hour of every day."  That is how each episode of "Person of Interest" on CBS begins.  Most Americans that have watched the show just assume that such a surveillance network is completely fictional and that the government would never watch us like that.  Sadly, most Americans are wrong.  Shocking new details have emerged this week which prove that a creepy nationwide network of spy cameras is being rolled out across the United States.  Reportedly, these new spy cameras are "more accurate than modern facial recognition technology", and every few seconds they send back data from cities and major landmarks all over the United States to a centralized processing center where it is analyzed.  The authorities believe that the world has become such a dangerous place that the only way to keep us all safe is to watch what everyone does all the time.  But the truth is that instead of "saving America", all of these repressive surveillance technologies are slowly killing our liberties and our freedoms.  America is being transformed into an Orwellian prison camp right in front of our eyes, and very few people are even objecting to it.

An RT article was one of the first news sources to reveal some of the shocking details about this new program....

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.

So after reading all of the information above, is there anyone out there that still doubts that America is being transformed into a giant surveillance grid?

The frightening thing is that there is a large percentage of the American people that are aware of many of these things, but they are convinced that these technologies are actually making society "better" and "safer".

We desperately need to wake up America while there is still time.  Please share this article with your family, your friends and your social media contacts on the Internet.

If we can get enough people to wake up, perhaps there is still enough time to turn this country in a different direction.

Will the final chapters of our history be a complete and total nightmare or will the final chapters of our history be the greatest chapters of all?

The choice, America, is up to you.

Read more -
http://www.blacklistednews.com/19_Signs_That_America_Is_Being_Systematically_Transformed_Into_A_Giant_Surveillance_Grid/21672/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Funniest 'For Sale' sign ever? Owner puts house on market 'because the neighbor's an a**hole' -

Funniest 'For Sale' sign ever? Owner puts house on market 'because the neighbor's an a**hole' - 


For homeowners trying to sell their properties themselves, the best advice is usually to keep it simple.
That's what the experts do when they put up for sale signs - but not these do-it-yourself realtors.
Instead, they've taken a more unconventional approach and included extra bits of information... like the neighbor is an 'a**hole'.

This refreshingly honest placard appeared in New Jersey and is one of a collection of ill-advised for sale sign attempts by people trying to market their homes.
It proclaimed: 'House For Sale By Owner Because My Neighbor's An Asshole.'
An image of the sign was sent to the Dennis & Judi show on NJ 101.5 FM by a listener of the station, which then posted the photo on its website.



However, this New Jersey homeowner is not the first to try radical tactics in the hopes of garnering attention for a property.
Another one revealed: 'Husband left us for a 22-year-old. House for sale by scorned, slightly bitter, newly single owner.'
It was put up by Ellie Zober, an Oregon woman who found out her husband was cheating on her.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207743/Is-funniest-For-Sale-sign-Owner-puts-house-market-neighbors-hole.html#ixzz27OSEWbMD

Events in stratosphere can affect Earth's entire climate - even of deep ocean currents -

Events in stratosphere can affect Earth's entire climate - even of deep ocean currents - 



Events high in the upper atmosphere can cause massive shifts in the behaviour even of deep ocean currents, according to new research.

"It is not new that the stratosphere impacts the troposphere," says Reichler, says Thomas Reichler, senior boffin on the team which discovered the effects. "It also is not new that the troposphere impacts the ocean. But now we actually demonstrated an entire link between the stratosphere, the troposphere and the ocean."


Reichler was working with other scientists both at his own university (Utah) and at the Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie in Hamburg.

According to a Utah uni statement announcing the research:

Reichler and colleagues used weather observations and 4,000 years worth of supercomputer simulations of weather to show a surprising association between decade-scale, periodic changes in stratospheric wind patterns known as the polar vortex, and similar rhythmic changes in deep-sea circulation patterns.

The ocean is very important to the climate, acting as it does as a vast storage and transport mechanism for heat. For instance the British climate is comparatively mild (given old Blighty's sub-arctic latitude) due to the fact that the seas around the UK bring heat up from the tropics.

But the oceans have tremendous mass compared even to the relatively dense atmospheric layer that rests upon them (the troposphere). Just the upper ten metres of ocean exert as much pressure on the waters beneath as the entire atmosphere does on the ocean's surface. While it's evident just how much the troposphere can affect the oceans even so - winds not only generate mighty ocean waves and swells, but can on occasion hold back the tides, affect currents etc - such things are mostly seen on the surface. The idea of events up in the wispy stratosphere reaching right down into the ocean deeps is certainly a counterintuitive one on the face of it.

Nonetheless, Reichler and his colleagues say that analysis of past history shows that a stratospheric wind pattern above the Arctic - the polar vortex - appears to exert a powerful influence on the critical heat "conveyor belt" in the north Atlantic.

"We found evidence that what happens in the stratosphere matters for the ocean circulation and therefore for climate," says Reichler.

It appears that current climate forecast models don't allow for this effect, and will need to be adjusted for it as it can produce large, decade-long ups and downs in temperature "separate from climate change", according to Reichler. He and his team write:

Our analyses identify a previously unknown source for decadal climate variability and suggest that simulations of deep layers of the atmosphere and the ocean are needed for realistic predictions of climate.

Thus it could be that with the new stratospheric effect added to climate forecasts, periods of flat temperatures like the one seen over the past decade - or even of some cooling, perhaps - might be forecast accurately, presumably against a general long-term upward trend due to increased atmospheric carbon. We are told:

In the 1980s and 2000s, a series of stratospheric sudden warming events weakened polar vortex winds. During the 1990s, the polar vortex remained strong.

Temperature records showed noticeable warming in the 1990s, in contrast to the 2000s.

Other recent research has also suggested that relatively minor stratospheric events could nonetheless have major climate effects. Researchers at the German GeoForschungsZentrums (GFZ) at Potsdam suggested that such a stratospheric mechanism driven by a solar quiet spell may have caused a 200-year-long cold snap (the "Homeric Minimum") some 2800 years ago. Eminent physicists consider that another such solar quiet period may be imminent, and noted that the most recent such occurrence in the 17th and 18th centuries was accompanied by a so-called "Little Ice Age". Nonetheless, mainstream climatologists who have longed warned of carbon-driven disaster have argued that this would not have a powerful enough effect to significantly counteract carbon-driven warming.

Read more - 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/24/stratosphere_events_affect_oceans/

At least ten more fake 10-ounce "gold bars" filled with Tungsten has been discovered -

At least ten more fake 10-ounce "gold bars" filled with Tungsten has been discovered - 



A few days ago, our report on the discovery of a single 10 oz Tungsten-filled gold bar in Manhattan's jewelry district promptly went viral, as it meant that a tungsten-based, gold-counterfeiting operation, previously isolated solely to the UK and Europe, had crossed the Atlantic. The good news was that the counterfeiting case was isolated to just one 10 oz bar. This morning, the NYPost reports that as had been expected, in the aftermath of the realization that the sanctity of the gold inventory on 47th Street just off Fifth Avenue has been polluted, and dealers promptly check the purity of their gold, at least ten more fake 10-ounce "gold bars" filled with Tungsten has been discovered.

The Post has learned as many as 10 fake gold bars — made up mostly of relatively worthless tungsten — were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District.

The 10-oz. gold bars are hugely popular with Main Street investors, and it is not known how many of the fake gold bars were sold to dealers — or if any fake bars were purchased by the public.
As is to be expected, the Post story is weak on details: after all, any dealer who admits to having allowed Tungsten to enter his or her inventory can kiss their retail business goodbye, as customers will avoid said Tungsten outlet like the plague, for the simple reason that suddenly counterparty risk has migrated from Wall Street to the Diamond District. The one named dealer is the same one who already made an appearance in the previous story on Tungsten in gold's clothing.

One gold dealer discovered that four of the 3-inch-by-1-inch gold bars he bought — worth about $72,000 retail — were counterfeit.

“It has the entire street on edge,” said Ibrahim Fadl, 62, who has been the owner of Express Metal Refining, a Midtown gold-refinery business, for the last 11 years. “I and the others on the street work off of trust; now that trust is strained.”

Fadl, a Columbia University graduate with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, and who has more than 40 years in the industry, purchased the four fake bars from a well-known Russian salesman with whom he has done business.
Ah yes, those pesky Russians: always happy to do the Fed's bidding, because who really gains from the loss of confidence in physical gold?

Fadl became suspicious when he offered the salesman a deep discount for the investment-grade gold bars and he quickly accepted it, a source tells The Post.

Fadl said he did his due diligence “by X-raying the bars to ascertain the purity of the gold and weighing the bars, and the Swiss markings were perfect.”

Tungsten is an industrial metal that weighs nearly the same as gold but costs a little over $1 an ounce. Gold closed Friday at $1,774.80 an ounce.
We wish Fadl all the best in his liquidation sale. Others, for logical reasons, are far less willing to step forward:

A second 47th Street refiner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was burned recently when he bought six gold bars that turned out to be mostly tungsten, with just a gold veneer. He would not comment, though, on who sold him the bogus bars.
The counterfeiting so far appears to have impacted solely PAMP (Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux ) gold bars, madeby MTB, whose CEO can hardly be too happy that some "Russian" has made it a life mission to destroy the credibility of any gold stamped with the PAMP stamp.

Raymond Nassim, CEO of Manfra, Tordell & Brookes, the American arm of the Swiss firm that created the original gold bars — with their serial number and purity rating stamped clearly into them — said he reported the situation to the US Secret Service, whose jurisdiction covers the counterfeiting of gold bars.

He said his company “is supporting and cooperating with authorities any way we can.”

Nassim thought the culprit must be a professionally trained jeweler to have pulled off the caper.

“The forger had to slice the original bar along the side, hollow out the gold and insert the tungsten ingot, and then reseal and polish the bar, Nassim said.
The case of gold counterfeiting has already taken NYC by storm:

At an industry dinner Thursday night hosted by Comex, the New York-based metals exchange, the room was abuzz with talk about the bogus gold bars, according to Fadl.
Which was also to be expected. What is also to be expected is that as more and more stories of Tungsten making it into broader gold circulation, that retail sales of physical gold will certainly be impaired as end consumers become far more cautious about what they buy.

And while we await more information, especially from the Secret Service, who is "on top" of this case, which we assume implies that gold is after all money, we leave readers with our conclusion from Tuesday: "with false flags rampant these days, we would not be surprised if this is merely yet another attempt to discredit gold, this time physical, as an undilutable medium of warehousing wealth. So buyer beware: in a time when everyone is broke, triple check before exchanging one store of wealth for another."

For those curious what a fake 10oz bar looks like, here it is again:










Read more -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-23/gold-counterfeiting-goes-viral-10-tungsten-filled-gold-bars-are-discovered-manhattan

More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes as miserable economy takes its toll -

More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes as miserable economy takes its toll - 



Suicide is a bigger killer than car crashes, according to an alarming new study.
The number of people dying from suicide has drastically increased, while car accident deaths haven lessened, making suicide the leading cause of injury death.
Suicides via falls or poisoning have risen significantly and experts fear there could be en more going unrecognised, specifically in cases of overdose.

'Suicides are terribly under-counted,' said Ian Rockett, author of the study, published on Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health.
'I think the problem is much worse than official data would lead us to believe. We have a situation that has gotten out of hand.'

He added that his goal is to see the same attention paid to other injuries as has been paid to traffic injuries.
The results were compiled using National Centre for Health Statistics data gathered from 2000 to 2009. 
Researchers noted a 25 per cent decrease in car accident deaths, medicalxpress.com reported, while deaths from falls rose 71 per cent, from poisoning 128 per cent and from suicide 15 per cent.

Former U.S. Senator Gordon Smith spoke at a news conference to launch the suicide prevention programme
Higher automobile standards were credited for the traffic deaths drop, with harsher penalties for underage drinking and failing to wear seat belts named as contributing factors.
Previous research has suggested that suicide rates go up during recessions and times of economic crisis.
'Economic problems can impact how people feel about themselves and their futures as well as their relationships with family and friends,' Feijun Luo of CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention told Bloomberg.
'Prevention strategies can focus on individuals, families, neighborhoods or entire communities to reduce risk factors.'
The shift makes suicide the most frequent cause of injury deaths, followed by car crashes, poisoning, falls and murder.
The study also looked at gender and race, concluding that fewer women die from the top four causes than men, while Hispanics have fewer car crashes and suicides than whites but a higher murder rate.
In 2009, more than 37,000 Americans took their own lives, a number that the government and private groups such as Facebook are fighting to lower.
A suicide prevention programme is being launched under the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, backed by $56 million of federal money. 
The Act was signed by George Bush in 2004, in memory of suicide-victim Garrett, son of former U.S. Senator Gordon Smith.
Speaking at a September 10 news conference Smith said: 'Our goal is, in the next five years, we will save 20,000 human lives.
'This issue touches nearly every family. It is something we can do something about. It's the work of angels.'
Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology, said while much is known about how to prevent suicides there are 'centuries of stigmatic attitudes' that need to be overcome. 
'Both global and national increases in the number and rate of suicides should concern all of us,' he added, pushing for a 'collaborative effort to turn these many lives from despair and hopelessness to ones of meaning and brighter futures'.

Read more -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207089/56-million-suicide-prevention-programme-launched-study-reveals-Americans-lives-die-car-crashes.html

Facebook: Snitchgate! - Facebook Tries To Make People Snitch On Their Friends -

Facebook: Snitchgate! - Facebook Tries To Make People Snitch On Their Friends - 


A story about Facebook went around twitter last night that provoked quite a reaction in privacy advocates like me: Facebook, it seems, is experimenting with getting people to ‘snitch’ on any of their friends who don’t use their real names. Take a look at this:




Facebook has had a ‘real names’ policy for a while: this is what their ‘Help Center’ says on the subject:


People in my field have known about this for a long time – it’s been the cause of a few ‘high profile’ events such as when Salman Rushdie had his account suspended because they didn’t believe that he was who he said he was – but few people had taken it very seriously for anyone other than the famous. Everyone knows ‘fake’ names and ‘fake’ accounts – my sister’s dog has a Facebook account – so few believed that Facebook was going to bother enforcing it, except for obvious trolls and so forth. Now, however, that appears to be changing.

Initially, I wondered if this was just a fake – the screenshot could easily have been faked – but there seems now to have been confirmation. It has been covered in the TMP Idea Lab (here), where they say that Facebook has confirmed that they are doing it, and the German online magazine Heise Online (here, in German) where they report that it is a ‘limited test’. Given that this kind of a test fits in with the official strategy, it seems likely that it is indeed true.

So what’s wrong?

There are lots of argument against the whole ‘real names’ policy to start with – it was a trigger for the ‘nymwars’. Many people can only really function online with the ability to remain pseudonymous, from bloggers like Nightjack to whistleblowers, from victims of abuse to people living in oppressive regimes. When their pseudonymity is ‘broken’, the result can be catastrophic – when Nightjack’s cover was blown, his blog ceased to exist and a valuable and entertaining source of information was lost. Mexican bloggers have suffered much worse – a number have lost their lives in the most gruesome way when the drugs cartels have been able to find them. The link between the ‘online’ and the ‘offline’ personality is one that can often need to be protected. When the ‘real names’ policy is enforced, protecting that link becomes much, much harder.

This, of course, is Facebook, which is just one service, rather than the net as a whole – but it’s a crucial service, with close to a billion users around the world, pretty close to ubiquitous. And, just as importantly, where Facebook leads, other services can and do follow. If the ‘real names’ policy becomes accepted on Facebook, it may become the norm. For some people, that sounds like a good thing – catching paedophiles and terrorists, making sure children don’t get access to ‘inappropriate material’ and so forth – but the reality is very different. The real ‘bad guys’ will find a way around the system – as so often, it will almost certainly be the innocent that get caught up in the messes.

Snitching

What’s worse, the whole idea of snitching is highly dodgy. There’s a good reason that ‘telling tales’ is looked down on – and a good reason why it’s generally only been oppressive regimes (both real and fictional) that have encouraged people to report on their neighbours – from the worst of the Roman Emperors such as Tiberius and Caligula to the KGB, the Stasi and so forth. It’s creepy – and it helps build at atmosphere of distrust, breaking down the very things that make social networks good. The social relationships that are the heart of Facebook are meant to do ‘good’ things – not be a route by which bad things are spread.

Taking it a step further, look at the nature of the questionnaire. You’re being asked to report on a ‘friend’. If you say ‘I don’t want to answer’ that will be recorded – that’s the whole nature of Facebook – and it’s not hard to see that there could be a list of ‘people who don’t want to answer about their friends’. Indeed, under the terms of the Snoopers Charter, it wouldn’t just be Facebook who could access this kind of information: the authorities could potentially set up a filter to gather data on people who don’t confirm the names of their friends. It could be viewed as suspicious if you don’t answer – or even suspicious if you are friends with people who don’t answer. Again, this is the nature of Facebook’s social data – and how it could be misused.

And, as anyone who reads what I write about the Snoopers Charter etc will understand, though this may just be set up to catch paedophiles and terrorists, it can equally be used for all kinds of things. Potential employers who want to see whether their applicants are ‘open and honest’. Insurance companies for the same ‘reason’. Facebook is now in a situation where it needs to generate income – the failure of its IPO has made this even more crucial than before – and will be looking for ways to squeeze out as much revenue from their data as possible.

That, ultimately, is what lies behind this kind of thing: Facebook wants to make money. If it knows exactly who you are, it thinks it can make more money from you – by selling things to you, or by selling your details to others, or by targeting you more accurately in some other way. That’s perfectly understandable – indeed, from a business sense pretty much inevitable – but it does have consequences, particularly when the other uses that their data can be put are understood.

Oppressive regimes understand some of those uses – which is one of the reasons that the erstwhile Tunisian government, prior to the revolution, hacked into the Facebook login page in order to be able to access possible revolutionaries’ accounts. They knew how that information could be used…

What should be done?

Well, the first thing to do is make it clear that you don’t like this kind of a system. The whole idea of snitching should not be something that’s encouraged – indeed, the whole ‘real names’ system should be discouraged, but it seems hard to put that genie back into Facebook’s bottle. Ultimately, I suspect there’s only one answer: many people should simply leave Facebook. Find other ways to do the things you want to do, other ways that don’t require ‘real names’ and don’t use such sneaky and creepy tactics as snitching. Communicate by email, by twitter. Share your photos on other photo sites. Play games directly, not over Facebook. There’s always another way.

Read more -
http://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/facebook-snitchgate/

Potty Mouth TV chef Paula Deen Lets Loose In Secret Blooper Reel - “You ever smelled a stinky coochie?” -

Potty Mouth TV chef Paula Deen Lets Loose In Secret Blooper Reel - “You ever smelled a stinky coochie?” - 



That’s the question TV chef Paula Deen asked on the set of her show Paula Deen’s Home Cooking in a secret blooper reel that has surfaced.

In the tape obtained by The New York Post, the Southern cook turns her nose up at a dish she’s cooking, proclaiming it smells like “stinky coochie.”

Deen’s naughty quote is just one in a series of X-rated comments she makes on the tape.

And while she can be heard screeching the words “sh**” and “motherf***er,” she is also seen simulating oral sex with a chocolate éclair!

The two-minute tape was all too much for one man – Gary Ravet, the president of Celebrity Chefs Tour, which puts on a series of live events featuring TV cooks.

Potty-mouthed Deen had contracted to go out on the tour and put together the blooper reel to be played for the live audiences as an introduction before each of her appearances.

But Ravet rejected it saying: “We found it to be unacceptable because it’s certainly not family content.”

Deen ultimately backed out of the 10-city tour and then sued the company for $1.25 million claiming a check they gave her bounced.

Ravet countersued for $40 million citing breach of contract. He argued the chef was required to provide a “blooper reel” but they were disappointed her film was “laced with expletives.”

The lawsuit was settled last week and a judge ordered the cheeky tape be returned to Deen. The terms are confidential but Ravet tells The Post the TV chef “paid a lot of money.”



Read more -
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/09/paula-deen-swears-uses-obscene-gestures-camera-video

Is Alzheimers Just Another Form of Diabetes? How Our Diet May Be Destroying Our Brains -

Is Alzheimers Just Another Form of Diabetes? How Our Diet May Be Destroying Our Brains - 



There is a strong and growing body of evidence showing a link between the dreaded disease and our high sugar consumption.

When you raise the subject of over-eating and obesity, you often see people at their worst. The comment threads discussing these issues reveal a legion of bullies, who appear to delight in other people’s problems.

When alcoholism and drug addiction are discussed, the tone tends to be sympathetic. When obesity is discussed, the conversation is dominated by mockery and blame, though the evidence suggests that it can be driven by similar forms of addiction (citations 1,2,3,4). I suspect that much of this mockery is a coded form of snobbery: the strong association between poor diets and poverty allows people to use this issue as a cipher for something else they want to say, which is less socially acceptable.

But this problem belongs to all of us. Even if you can detach yourself from the suffering caused by diseases arising from bad diets, you will carry the cost, as a growing proportion of the health budget will be used to address them. The cost – measured in both human suffering and money – could be far greater than we imagined. A large body of evidence now suggests that Alzheimer’s is primarily a metabolic disease. Some scientists have gone so far as to rename it. They call it diabetes type 3.

New Scientist carried this story on its cover this September(5): since then I’ve been sitting in the library trying to discover whether it stands up. I’ve now read dozens of papers on the subject, testing my cognitive powers to the limit as I’ve tried to get to grips with brain chemistry. While the story is by no means complete, the evidence so far is compelling.

Around 35 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease worldwide(6); current projections, based on the rate at which the population ages, suggest that this will rise to 100 million by 2050(7). But if, as many scientists now believe, it is caused largely by the brain’s impaired response to insulin, the numbers could rise much further. In the US, the percentage of the population with diabetes type 2, which is strongly linked to obesity, has almost trebled in 30 years(8). If Alzheimer’s, or “diabetes type 3”, goes the same way, the potential for human suffering is incalculable.

Insulin is the hormone which prompts the liver, muscles and fat to absorb sugar from the blood. Diabetes 2 is caused by excessive blood glucose, resulting either from a deficiency of insulin produced by the pancreas, or resistance to its signals by the organs which would usually take up the glucose.

The association between Alzheimer’s and diabetes 2 is long-established: type 2 sufferers are two to three times more likely to be struck by this dementia than the general population(9). There are also associations between Alzheimer’s and obesity(10) and Alzheimer’s and metabolic syndrome (a complex of diet-related pathologies)(11).

Researchers first proposed that Alzheimer’s was another form of diabetes in 2005. The authors of the original paper investigated the brains of 54 corpses, 28 of which belonged to people who had died of the disease(12). They found that the levels of both insulin and insulin-like growth factors in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients were sharply reduced by comparison to those in the brains of people who had died of other causes. Levels were lowest in the parts of the brain most affected by the disease.

Their work led them to conclude that insulin and insulin-like growth factor are produced not only in the pancreas but also in the brain. Insulin in the brain has a host of functions: as well as glucose metabolism, it helps to regulate the transmission of signals from one nerve cell to another, and affects their growth, plasticity and survival(13,14).

Experiments conducted since then appear to support the link between diet and dementia(15,16,17,18), and researchers have begun to propose potential mechanisms. In common with all brain chemistry, these tend to be fantastically complex, involving, among other impacts, inflammation, stress caused by oxidation, the accumulation of one kind of brain protein and the transformation of another(19,20,21,22). I would need the next six pages of this paper even to begin to explain them, and would doubtless get it wrong (if you’re interested, please follow the links on my website).

Plenty of research still needs to be done. But if the current indications are correct, Alzheimer’s disease could be another catastrophic impact of the junk food industry, and the worst discovered so far. Our governments, as they are in the face of all our major crises, appear to be incapable of responding.

Read more -
http://www.alternet.org/alzheimers-just-another-form-diabetes-how-our-diet-may-be-destroying-our-brains?paging=off